The best fighter with propeller and piston engine

Victor,

I did not miss it. The reason the Spitfire and the Hawker Hurricane had 8 machine guns was the estimate of an RAF pilot that a fighter at its best can keep the bomber in aim sight no more than 2 seconds. So the 2 seconds rule was followed when they fit 8 machine guns in the plane: to have so many bullets per second that the enemy plane would collapse in 2 seconds.

You are right, 20 mm canons had a faster rate. But now I say... How far did you get my point? A projectile of 30 mm can carry 3.38 times more explosive, compared with the 20 mm.
I saw once a footage with a Me-262 firing its 30 mm canons against a 4 motor bomber. It was like 4 continuous streams of projectiles. You could see every single projectile of the 4 streams, and the unfortunate Allied bomber was melting away literally.
Over the war, the armament of the fighters evolved toward bigger calibers. And it ended with German air to air missiles, in 1945. And the trend is still followed today. The planes of today have few big air to air missiles, instead of the hundreds of bullets carried in the 40's.

And for Iama: I mentioned the influences of German design ideas in this Japanese plane right in the opening article of the topic, but I guess you did not bother to read it.

This post has been edited by Florin on September 29, 2004 11:48 pm

Florin, I don't mean to jump on the pile against you, so don't take it personally...

Just a short comment to your statement above: First off, today's planes have both air to air missiles as well as machine guns or cannons with hundreds/thousands of rounds.
Secondly, and more important, they have "few big air to air missiles" because of their precision due to automated target locking. So their value increases exponentially. In WWII, one cannon round (projectile) had maybe a 0.1% chance of hitting the enemy plane. One of today's guided missiles has a 50% or larger chance of hitting the other plane.

A bit off topic, but the same line of thought can be applied to bombers. In WWII, several hundred B-24/29 were sent to take care of one ground target. With today's laser-guided and smart bombs, 1 (One) B-2 bomber can take care of 28 targets. I forget the exact numbers, but I got this from a study which I found quite amazing. Anyway, this is why today's fleet of US bombers is much smaller than it was during WWII, and yet it has more capabilities and more power.

Yes... I thought about the radio control or LASER control of today's missiles, but I wrote what I wrote anyway.
It is good to remember that the first radio remote control from air of a bomb/missile was performed by the Germans. Even though the system was primitive, the result was spectacular. With this radio controlled air to sea bomb they sunk a British aircraft carrier, in the Mediteran Sea. Maybe also a British battleship. I write "maybe" because is from memory. Who wants more information can try some search on Google.
Of course, later the V-2 followed, also remote-controlled by radio, but that is much better known. The Germans also developed a very smart ground to air missile, also remote controlled by radio. Unfortunately, the German leadership considered its range up to 4000 meters as too low. And because they saw V-2 as more spectacular, they allocated the resources of Germany to it. Neglecting the ground to air defence program, in favor of the V-2 program, is considered as one of the very few mistakes made by Albert Speer as Minister of Weaponry.

This post has been edited by Florin on September 30, 2004 04:46 am

You first need to actually be able to hit the B-24/29 bomber, not just carry enough explosive power to bring it down. Four 20 mm cannons could do the job pretty nicely also. Even two would bring it down. But against fighters with even greater speed and in greater numbers (not to mention 6 12.7 mm HMGs, which were enough to shoot down any existing fighter and had a much higher rate of fire), four 30 mm cannons can be pretty clumsy and might not work as well. You mentioned air-to-air rockets, but these weren't by far as effective as today, as mabadesc mentioned.

IMO the ultimate fighter should be able to equally handle both bombers and fighters, not just be effective against one type and it is my conviction that the Ta-152 was the best propeller fighter of WW2. It was even battle tested, unlike the Japanese project.

HA !
That's one of the few times that I agree with Victor

I don't doubt this is true, Florin. The new military technology being developed in Germany in 1944-45 was quite amazing. Unfortunately for Germany, their factories and arms industry were in too bad a shape to materialize any of these new products in efficient quantities. They simply ran out of time. Also, there were some bad decisions made by their leadership, and especially by Hitler - one well-known example being the Me-262 being converted into a light bomber instead of remaining a fighter as it was initially planned.

Like the Americans and British who preferred in General Machine Guns,..and lots of them..so that their inexperienced pilots could at least hit something.

P-40 Warhawk..., Thunerbolt, ...Mustand and the early Hurricane & Spitfires all had MG's and heavy 12.7 Mg's with lots of bulltes, but no cannon.

The Russian, practically, all their planes from I-16, to Yak-3 had Cannon.

This post has been edited by Der Maresal on October 05, 2004 12:14 am

At 600 Rounds per minute continous fire, what better weapon do you need?


Mk108

German Mk108 30mm Canon.

Florin, usually, i "bother" to read all posts with interests for me. Maybe my bad english knowledge was - again - quilty (*?). What i try to say at that momment, was: Shinden plane have a second-hand german influence, beacause the plane with first - hand influence was japanesse jet plane. Maybe, in future, my english become better, and what i want to say .. have a succesfull "intelegere".

Iama

Right ! More than that, usualy, the allied pillots were engaged manly in dog fights with another fighters above Germany, Japan or Pacific. So, in this situations, some HMGs were more effective than a pair of cannons.