The Flying Coffins: 5 Worst Fighter Aircraft of All Time

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by basher54321 » 02 Nov 2018, 16:39

For a second gen jet you will probably find the F-104 wasn't that bad considering countries like Germany were trying to use it as a multirole jet - when it only ever was a lightweight interceptor that at times was unmatched in performance.

Any aircraft being used out of its design role cant be included can it - one of the reason the original article is nothing but s**tbait.

The F-105 was shot out of the sky mostly because of the way it was used not for what it was which was a low level nuclear bomber. It wasnt a great strike jet in Nam - but so what that is not the designers fault or the fault of a/c but more the total lack of foresight by some stupid Human beings.

If you want aircraft that crashed a lot then there are plenty in WW1 and WW2 that were horror stories, the Sopwith Camel supposedly killed more in training than it shot down. Is it absolved from blame because it was a pioneer of aircraft? - but then Jets like the F-104 were pioneers of the jet age when most things learnt about airframe had to be thrown in the bin.

Were these arcraft bad in their intended roles in the time period they were designed.....of course not.

Aircraft that failed in their intended roles and got their pilots killed in combat - now you are talking:

Bolton Paul Defiant - a crap idea done badly
Fairey Battle ultra crap - even with a Merlin engine.
Brewster Buffalo - a turd with wings
P39 Aerocobra - quite possibly the only fighter rejected by the RAF - mainly because a fighter it wasn't.


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by outlaw162 » 02 Nov 2018, 18:48

I 'spect it has always been somewhat of a 'badge of courage' for the 'flying potential corpse' to be able to say they were flying an aircraft known as a 'flying coffin'. And if you managed to live thru it, hey hey....


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by linkomart » 13 Nov 2018, 09:04

basher54321 wrote:
Aircraft that failed in their intended roles and got their pilots killed in combat - now you are talking:

Bolton Paul Defiant - a crap idea done badly
Fairey Battle ultra crap - even with a Merlin engine.
Brewster Buffalo - a turd with wings
P39 Aerocobra - quite possibly the only fighter rejected by the RAF - mainly because a fighter it wasn't.


Ilmavoimat (FiAF) used their Brewster Buffalo with an average 32 to 1 kill ratio.... and according to wiki the 503 built BB produced 40 aces... not a bad record IMHO.


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by hornetfinn » 13 Nov 2018, 10:14

Brewster Buffalo has really incredible history. It had both some of the worst and best records during WW2. In Finland it had great success against even the best Soviet fighters and everywhere else was pretty much a disaster. Probably had a lot to do with poor Soviet training and tactics at the time compared to Finnish training and tactics.


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by Corsair1963 » 13 Nov 2018, 10:53

I spoke to Pappy Boyington as a young man and he told me he liked the Brewster Buffalo but Navy ruined it by adding to much junk...........(or that is at least what I recall)
:shock:


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by Corsair1963 » 13 Nov 2018, 10:58

That said, the article is actually quite comical and hardly worth any serious consideration....... :roll:


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by hkultala » 14 Nov 2018, 16:19

hornetfinn wrote:Brewster Buffalo has really incredible history. It had both some of the worst and best records during WW2. In Finland it had great success against even the best Soviet fighters and everywhere else was pretty much a disaster. Probably had a lot to do with poor Soviet training and tactics at the time compared to Finnish training and tactics.


I'd say it has at least equally much to do with the poor tactics and pilot training of dutch and USN pilots in early 1942 compared to japanese tactics and pilot training.

Buffalo did badly in indonesia because they tried to dogfight against the best dogfighters in the world.

ANY allied plane would have done really badly on that.

On USN use F4F did much better than Buffalo because the USN pilots had learned their lessons and did not try to dogfight zeroes and hayabusas anymore and instead relied on sensible tactics like thatch wave. Not because F4F was a better aeroplane (It really wasn't much better!)


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by knowan » 20 Nov 2018, 11:31

Buffalo wasn't that bad; the Dutch found that it theirs flew with half normal ammunition load, it could turn with the Japanese Ki-43, which was up there with the Zero in the turning department.
The Dutch were flying earlier lighter weight versions like the Finns though; the bad reputation stems from the later, heavier, versions.

The P-39 was not a bad fighter, despite some instability problems. The reason the RAF rejected it is the poor high altitude performance of the plane, due to its Alison engine having only a single supercharger stage, at a time the RAF was focusing on medium and high altitude combat.
At lower altitudes the plane possessed quite good performance, quite capable of beating the Bf 109, as the Soviets discovered with theirs.


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by Corsair1963 » 20 Nov 2018, 11:46

knowan wrote:Buffalo wasn't that bad; the Dutch found that it theirs flew with half normal ammunition load, it could turn with the Japanese Ki-43, which was up there with the Zero in the turning department.
The Dutch were flying earlier lighter weight versions like the Finns though; the bad reputation stems from the later, heavier, versions.



The latter is what Pappy Boyington must have been talking about..... :|


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by basher54321 » 20 Nov 2018, 14:48


The P-39 was not a bad fighter, despite some instability problems. The reason the RAF rejected it is the poor high altitude performance of the plane, due to its Alison engine having only a single supercharger stage, at a time the RAF was focusing on medium and high altitude combat.
At lower altitudes the plane possessed quite good performance, quite capable of beating the Bf 109, as the Soviets discovered with theirs.


It was more than that - Bell had based performance figures on the XP-39 and thus it fell far short of what was expected - also noted was 19 serious deficiencies. They replaced Hurricane IIs in 1941 very briefly before being sent to Russia or given back to the US. They had trialled against the older bf109E where it did out turn and out dive it below 15,000ft but things had moved on and its performance was just not good enough for that role.


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by knowan » 21 Nov 2018, 07:40

Corsair1963 wrote:The latter is what Pappy Boyington must have been talking about..... :|


I was partialy wrong on one point; they needed to halve the fuel load in addition to ammunition.

The wikipedia article has a fair bit of detail: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brewster_F2A_Buffalo as does joebaugher articles: http://www.joebaugher.com/navy_fighters/f2a.html

The Dutch were flying B-339C and B-339D models that were de-navalised F2A-2; their D models were equipped with 1200 HP engines, and both variants were lighter than the B-339E used by the British (which were also limited to 1000 HP engines).
The Dutch were heavily outnumbered by the Japanese, but still managed to achieve some success with their Buffalo; in instance 8 Buffalo engaged 35 Japanese bombers escorted by 20 Zeroes, shooting down 11 enemy aircraft for the loss of 4 Buffalo.
In the end, the Dutch claimed 55 enemy aircraft shot down to 30 Buffalo lost in air to air combat, and another 15 destroyed on the ground.

The models used by the Finns were B-239; de-navalised F2A-1 with more powerful 950 HP engines. They were likely the lightest weight Buffalo to see action, which goes some way to explaining their success.



basher54321 wrote:It was more than that - Bell had based performance figures on the XP-39 and thus it fell far short of what was expected - also noted was 19 serious deficiencies. They replaced Hurricane IIs in 1941 very briefly before being sent to Russia or given back to the US. They had trialled against the older bf109E where it did out turn and out dive it below 15,000ft but things had moved on and its performance was just not good enough for that role.


From joebaugher: http://www.joebaugher.com/usaf_fighters/p39_5.html
The AFDU also did some comparative dog-fighting tests with the Airacobra against a Spitfire VB and a captured Messerschmitt BF 109E. The Airacobra and the Bf 109E carried out mock dog-fighting at 6000 feet and 15,000 feet. The Bf 109E had a height advantage of 1000 feet in each case. The Bf 109, using the normal German fighter tactics of diving and zooming, could usually only get in a fleeting shot. The Bf 109 could not compete with the Airacobra in a turn, and if the Bf 109 were behind the Airacobra at the start, the latter could usually shake him off and get in a burst before two complete turns were completed. If the Bf 109 were to dive on the Airacobra from above and continue the dive down to ground level after a short burst of fire, it was found that the Airacobra could follow and catch up to the Bf 109 after a dive of over 4000 feet. When fighting the Bf 109E below 20,000 feet, the Airacobra was superior on the same level and in a dive.


It's likely the P-400 would have retained advantage over the later Bf 109F.


In the end, the British passed on the P-39, despite:
the RAF concluded that the Airacobra would make an excellent day fighter at altitudes below 20,000 feet and was well suited for the ground-attack role.

They likely believed it wasn't worth sorting out the problems with the plane when other aircraft were readily available.


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by basher54321 » 21 Nov 2018, 21:40

Yes the Brits and the US had access to better aircraft that they replaced it with in A-A - if it had been at a level near the FW-190 which was coming in at about the same time might have been a different story. The Mustang was poor at high altitude with an Alison but that didn't matter - importantly it had style, pedigree and a ridiculously low drag airframe. :D

Okay that is lazy - didn't realise the Buffalo was a 1939 Navy fighter - so I cannot blame it for being obsolete by 1942 on the performance front so it kinda gets a pardon (but only on that point)

Overclaiming was rife on all sides - over New Guinea in 1942 P-39s had 95 claims against Zero-sens - yet in reality the total turned out to be 15...


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by knowan » 23 Nov 2018, 02:13

basher54321 wrote:The Mustang was poor at high altitude with an Alison but that didn't matter - importantly it had style, pedigree and a ridiculously low drag airframe. :D


The Mustang also had much better range, even with the Alison engined versions. The P-39 always had fairly short range, which was why the USA was never really interested in the improved versions of it, or even the P-63 that could fight at high altitude.


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by weasel1962 » 23 Nov 2018, 03:18

plus the pilots knew how to use it. Specs are not everything. On paper the Me262 should have been shooting down mustangs like flies instead of the opposite.


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by smsgtmac » 24 Nov 2018, 00:58

zero-one wrote:Article from National Interest.
I'd say some of the planes on the list (i.e. Mig-23 were well deserving) but do you guys think the Century series deserved to be here:

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/ ... page=0%2C1



This article was c*** when it was first published years ago. Others have pointed out a lot of the problems with Farley's list (no doubt info was dredged from any number of 'pop-history' picture books). But all you have to know, to see how little Farley knows is summed up in his one line:
"A relatively large aircraft, the Flogger also lacked many of the best qualities of its predecessors, including a small visual profile."


Why?'
Farley-Knows-Nothing-Exhibit-Mig23-vs-F16.jpg

He probably thinks the Mig-29 is "huge" too.
When I sized the F-16 to the MiG-23 I assumed the F-16's radome probe was included in overall length to be conservative in scaling the F-16. I know the dimension for the MiG includes the probe
--The ultimate weapon is the mind of man.


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