American Ace Takes on Half the Luftwaffe
tags:
Stumble ThisI'm not American, however the determination of this fighter to keep fighters, and jet fighters off his bombers makes me respect him, and leaves me in awe. The second half has a maneuver I have never heard of or seen before. Just amazing.
2nd Half: Conclusion
2nd Half: Conclusion
Edit: And yes, that was an awesome sift.
lol nice , but it did seem like the majority of the German piolots were complete noobs. be nice to here the story from the other side.
"Wir waren betrunken."
You'll notice how they are basically climbing straight up to the bombers. That's either inexperience or they had no time to set up for a proper attack. Normally, you need to gain the altitude advantage in a 109, so you can dominate the fight without resorting to turnfights. As for the Me 262s: they could have easily outclimbed the Mustang, despite his initial altitude advantage. They played his game instead of forcing theirs upon him.
The defensive formation described as the circle was practiced by Bf 110s when they were used as escort fighters, because they were not nearly maneuverable enough to engage Hurricanes or Spitfires. Thus they resorted to a defensive formation, rendering them utterly useless for bomber protection. If 109 pilots employ this "tactic", you know they are as green as they get.
By the way: the fight between Sonderkommando Elbe and the bombers took place over the "Steinhuder Meer", a lake not even 20km from where I'm writing these very words. A memorial can be found in Celle, about 30km from here.
A survivor of the unit, who didn't take part in this sortie though, is Dr. Fritz Marktscheffel, who was active every now and then on Luftwaffe-Forum.de while it was still online.
>> ^Engels:
Kudos where kudos are due...but the 109 was no match for the P-51D and it was very easy to outmanouver those ME-262s. They were very primitive jets with only speed in a straight line on their side.
Can't leave this uncommented, sorry.
The Bf 109K4, deployed at the time of the engagement, outclimbs and outaccelerates the P51D at almost any altitude and has a similar top speed at high altitude. If used correctly - only BnZ, no TnB -, it can dominate the Mustangs. G6, G10 and G14 could hold their own as well. Even though they were inferior, to say they were "no match" is oversimplifying and/or exaggerating. Most Luftwaffe fighters simply had a different flight profile than the others.
Same for the Me 262 - keep to BnZ and no piston engine fighter will stand a chance. Unfortunatly, it's a luxury you can't quite afford if you have to shoot down bombers as quickly as possible, because they are already over your territory. Mustangs could easily outturn them, but they couldn't catch them either unless they started with a significant altitude advantage.
Every time Candelaria talked there was this deafening clanging going on in the background.
Just to illustrate that at night, even the cumbersome Bf 110, He 219 and Ju 88 could slice through bomber squads like cheese. It's a good thing that neither Messerschmitt nor Focke-Wulff nor Henschel could build a proper two-engined fighter like the Mossie or P38 or else the losses would have been even more horrible than they were already.
Also I agree with chilaxe, all through the two vids I kept thinking how impressive those machines were for the time.
Did anyone else have trouble with the sound?
Every time Candelaria talked there was this deafening clanging going on in the background.
I see what you did there.
>> ^direpickle:
>> ^MycroftHomlz:
Did anyone else have trouble with the sound?
Every time Candelaria talked there was this deafening clanging going on in the background.
I see what you did there.
Now, i watch shows that were originally on american tv shown on sky tv or such, and every few mins we get a fleeting black screen followed by a recap, cos we don't have the frequency of adverts
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messerschmitt_Me_262
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-51_Mustang
My "flight experience" is solely with simulators so devalue my opinions accordingly.
I always found the 262 to be too fast for dogfighting. It was great for hitting bombers which were practically stationary targets, but it was very difficult to get a bead on another fighter before you shot past them.
The P-51 is quite fast and powerful, of course, but not especially maneuverable. USAF craft generally weren't as agile as RAF and Luftwaffe craft, IMO. Of course, by the time the Mustang saw heavy service, the US was on heavy offense. It was necessary to sacrifice some maneuverability in exchange for increased flight range for bombing runs and escorts.
As for the guy at the end stating that the Mustang is the WW2 plane everyone wants to fly, I say "fuck no." Give me a Spitfire XIV any day.
/obligatory