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Why one over the other?


cutiger83
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Why one over the other?

I recently received an email from an aviation catalog and once again it was all about the P-51.

I have never been a big fan of the P-51. I have always preferred the P-47. The firepower of the P-47 was unbelievable. I read that the P-40 was a better fighter than originally believed and that it basically got an unwarranted bad wrap. How come you can find a P-51 on all sorts of items but rarely a P-47 or P-40?

I prefer the B-25 over the B-17 or B-24. I know that you can argue medium bomber vs heavy bomber but a B-25 took off from an aircraft carrier, How cool is that?! Sticking with heavy bombers, how come you always see so many items for a B-17 but nothing for a B-24?

While the good and bad qualities could be argued about each of these planes, why are we flooded with the P-51 and B-17 while the others are basically overlooked? If I see another catalog all about the P-51, I will throw-up.

 

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Patchcollector

The Mustang is my favorite plane of WW2.I think that most people are attracted to it's elegant beauty.The P-47 was all about firepower and CAS,which is reflected in it's design.It's the Beauty vs the Beast and most people favor the eye candy over the utilitarian design.

 

BTW,I happen to like the "Jug" almost as much as the P-51.I also like the A-10 "Warthog" as well.Great plane but not too "pretty".

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The Meatcan

Haha Kat! You are asking another version of the age old question. Tomato or tomahto! Hurricane or Spitfire? Bf-109 or.FW-190? B-17 or B-24? P-51 or Jug? It's an endless debate that always boils down to personal preference.

Terry

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Basically it comes down to the ETO units based out of England and with the 8th AF got the press. Covering the 9th AF on the continent was not the plush gig that being based in London and going out to an 8th Airfield at a well established permanent base was. Throw in that aesthetically the 51 and 17 were more pleasing and you get your answer. Sexy sells is basically what it comes down to.

 

Considering the role the P-47 played in both the escort and ground attack role, it was probably the more important fighter. It was there a lot longer than the 51 too, but there was nothing romantic about fighting the ground guns and dying to flak compared to the image of the dog fighter jousting with an enemy plane high over Germany.

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hbtcoveralls

Another factor is that Mustangs are by far the most common WWII fighter flying today in the US (spitfires in the UK) so that far more people have seen a mustang fly than a P-47. P-40 was limited by it's powerplant but I agree if I could fly any of them the Jug would be at the top of my list. Most top scoring ETO aces flew P-47s for at least some of their career including Johnson and Gabreski.

Tom Bowers

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I agree with all of the answers but why is it so dang hard to find anything other than a P-51 or B-17 on advertisement?

 

If sexy sells then the P-40 with the teeth painted on the nose is far better looking than a plain silver P-51. :)

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phantomfixer

I am sure you know the answer...it is all about consumerism.....

 

 

books have been written on the planes of WWII and which was better then the other one...and from what I have read it is all about perspective, who is doing the writing versus who did the flying///flyers loved their planes regardless...and it was always the best dang plane ever....if you were a B24 crew, it could outfly a B-17 any day and vice versa...same with the Jug and Mustang crews, the Mitchell versus the Marauder (which IMO is the hottest plane ever), and so on....They filled a role and it came down to production and Arnolds personal choices and decisions...the B24 was a much better bomber but the AAF put their stock in Boeing,,,and could not switch gears in the early part of the war....

 

 

post-155518-0-84228900-1459192438.jpg

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5thwingmarty

Careful calling the B-24 a much better plane, in many circles those are fightin' words. I have a friend who was a B-17 flight engineer and he can give you a list a mile long why he felt the B-17 was a much better plane. Even during the war the Air Force played off on the loyalties of crews to the B-17 and B-24, printing different manuals for the two that showed the other type of plane cracked up due to some sort of implied deficiency.

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phantomfixer

: ) yep dig it...notice I did not take sides......

 

books have been written and bar rooms cleaned out over the "better" bomber...

 

 

Even during the war the Air Force played off on the loyalties of crews to the B-17 and B-24, printing different manuals for the two that showed the other type of plane cracked up due to some sort of implied deficiency.

 

competition was a good thing for moral and fighting spirit...

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I agree with all of the answers but why is it so dang hard to find anything other than a P-51 or B-17 on advertisement?

 

If sexy sells then the P-40 with the teeth painted on the nose is far better looking than a plain silver P-51. :)

 

Kat, if you look around you'll be surprised how often you'll find a P-39 in wartime advertising. While it was a bit of a dog for real, it was a pretty airplane and looked good in advertisements

 

The P-38 sure got a lot of ink too again for the looks.

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phantomfixer

are we talking about period advertising or modern merchandise? I thought Kat was talking about modern advertising....

 

 

Life magazines, during the war, are a great source of advertising for AAF planes not found in modern merchandising

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are we talking about period advertising or modern merchandise? I thought Kat was talking about modern advertising....

 

 

Life magazines, during the war, are a great source of advertising for AAF planes not found in modern merchandising

 

I was talking about modern advertising and books. You can't throw a stick without hitting a book about a B-17 crew of P-51 pilot but try to find one about another crew. Not as easy. Try to find a modern painted print of a plane other than the B-17 or P-51. They are rare.

 

...Kat

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When discussing P-40s, you have to remember, there are P-40s, and there are P-40s, and then there are even "P-40s".

 

When the American Volunteer Group got their original batch of 100 planes (one ended up in the bay in Rangoon during unloading), although they were called P-40s, they really weren't. US Army personnel in the AVG were familiar with the P-40 and these planes looked 99.99% just like a P-40 so that's what they were called. But they were in fact Hawk 81s. Depending on which source you want to look at, they were H81A-2s, or H81A-3s. They were part of a diverted order for the RAF. The big thing that differentiates the P-40 from the others was the installed equipment. Things like internally or externally sealing fuel tanks for example. If a plane was a P-40, then it was built to US Army Air Corps spec. Foreign sales were Hawk 81s of some type.

 

Sticking with the "P-40s" of the AVG, the equivalent P-40 was roughly the P-40B. The P-40C had provisions for carrying a bomb, which the planes the AVG initially had were not equipped with, from the factory. Curtiss cheated a bit on these planes. They used some left-over parts and so on. Kinda crummy to do to the Brits, but there was a war on for everybody, or at least nearly so for the US. Curtiss was supposed to for example use an RAF paint color scheme. They used what they had, which is in my opinion the source of some of the confusion over the colors the planes were painted with. An interesting side note is that the planes were painted by using rubber mat templates, so they were very similar. There was an A and a B side to the templates, one for each side of the plane. Some planes got "A-A" or "B-B" sides, while most had "A-B".

 

Moving on to actual P-40s, the Army spec didn't initially have anything but a naturally aspirated engine, the Alison. While a good engine, combat experience over Europe proved that some kind of forced induction was needed. The P-40B was actually quite a maneuverable plane. We tend to think of "maneuverable" as "turns tight" but that's one facet to the gem. The ability to change attitude quickly is what it really means; a degree of intentional instability in flight is needed to be 'high response, high gain'. The roll rate of the P-40B was quite good. But as we know although it dove better than anything the Axis had for a long while, it climbed like a brick too.

 

Merlin engines were installed later on, and some of the P-40 flaws were addressed. But pilots found that other planes were better suited for the job. The US Army, not being totally wowed by air cooled types of fighters, could have developed the P-47 more, given it more internal tankage etc, but the P-51 was a darling and it also had a great PR windfall in being a US/Brit overall collaboration of great US airframe and great Brit engine. If the P-51 had been forced to use engines without the two stage supercharger, it would be a footnote.

 

Today we see 'P-51 P-51' because of the state of the aircraft after the war as surplus- P-40s were just not desired. Firstly, the P-51 design stayed with the Air Force, so it was sexy. Secondly, the plants continued to churn out P-51 as the war wound down and there were low-time examples for sale as surplus, and fairly cheap. Not many folks bought any of them. But those that did wanted to go fast. Air racers bought them and were successful with them and I think that's the huge contributor- more people bought P-51s surplus than bought P-47s. And as the years went by, the P-51 design was used by ANG units and US allies in the cold war, so there was a cool factor there too.

 

Same with B-17s. 4 engine pilots preferred them in many cases. Bob Morgan (Memphis Belle) certainly pulled no punches when he said that the '17 crews were happy to see '24s, because the German fighters weren't going to pick on the '17s so badly if B-24s were around. Many pilots found the B-17 better to fly. B-24s were also known as being 'wrinkly'. Look at wartime photos of the front lower fuselage- all the sheetmetal is wrinkled. This was normal. After the war, who was going to buy a bunch of B-24s with ugly wrinkles instead of the glamorous B-17 that had starred in a movie already?

 

Anyway. Read 'An Ace of the Eighth" by Norman "Bud" Fortier for the P-47 vs P-51 viewpoint of an ETO combat pilot. Interesting read.

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manayunkman

The B-17 and P-51 were the backbone of the AAF.

 

Promoting them, at every turn, also helped keep the public focused on what was needed for the war effort.

 

This is just my opinion of course

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P-39's were real lookers. They seemed to under perform though. But they did fine in Russia , didn't they? Lightnings were beautiful - loved reading stories about Jim Bong. And as beautiful as Spits were, those Hurricanes stole my heart.

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Patchcollector

As far as Bombers go,I've always been partial to the B-26(and the A-26 variant)

 

Here is a great shot of a B-26 in flight.

 

Info for this image reads:

 

Named "Big Hairy Bird"
B-26B-55-MA Marauder Serial number 42-96165 599th Bomb Squadron, 397th Bomb Group, 9th Air Force
Taken 1 December 1944
Date 1944

 

 

post-13386-0-37815700-1459365760.jpg

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20 posts and the US NAVY hasn't even entered the discussion, why always always USAAF? Navy aircraft won the skies over the pacific this just adds a whole new equation for an endless discussion like politics and religion.

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Patchcollector

When someone mentions Navy fighters I always think of the Corsair first.The gull wing design makes this my favorite Navy fighter.

 

Here's a photo of some Corsairs,notice the one in front has racked up quite an impressive amount of kills.

post-13386-0-03746800-1459516474.jpg

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I think it's all about marketing, given the fact that the P-51 seems so popular largely because you usually see more P-51s on the airshow circuit and at air races. I'm not downplaying the P-51. It was quite advanced for its time, being largely a fast-flying well-armed gas tank designed to escort bombers into the heart of Germany and Japan, but it continued to serve the Air Force faithfully in Korea and (while highly modified) Vietnam.

 

It's at times like this, though, that it's important for us as quasi historians to inform people. What truly makes a good airplane is longevity. Most people don't realize that the Air Force used B-17s as late as 1968 (one of the last is a gate guard at Grissom AFB) and B-24s as late as 1971 (that aircraft is on the parade field at Lackland AFB), or that aircraft like the Vietnam-famous Skyraider actually was first flow at the end of WW II.

 

How about the A/B-26 used for counter-insurgency in Vietnam....

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