Another free paper. WW2 fighters and engines.

[5MadFarmers]

Comments welcome. I am not a pilot, engineer, or fuel specialist.

Paper on planes and engines with a focus. (http://www.5madfarmers.com/tankpaper/FarmersNotesWW2FightersAndEngines.pdf)

[RED]

Interesting, thanks.

[Chaz]

Yes, interesting and well put. Thanks.

[kragluver]

Very good - and I am a pilot and engineer. One point about the B-29 losses (and I don't know the answer but just suppose)... The B-29 switched to medium and lower attitude bombing after their initial high altitude missions due to extreme jet stream winds aloft screwing up bombing accuracy. This put them down in the altitude region where the fighters could get to them. I suspect if one were to look at B-29 losses in air combat one would find most occurred after they switched to lower altitude tactics.

The B-29 also had much more effective defensive armament than the prior generation bombers which probably also plays to their reduced attrition. I'm not aware of any systematic analysis looking into that aspect.

[jon_norstog]

5, thanks for putting up this paper. It reminds me of the articles I used to read in my uncle's aircraft magazines way back when. The American fighters were superior by the end of the war, no question. The US also built about a quarter million aircraft and trained enough pilots and air crews to fly them. I got to see what was left of the manufacturing end of things when I was in grade school - my mother was a keypunch operator at Kaiser Main in Willow Run, the old Ford bomber plant where they built a B-24 every hour. We lived in the housing that was put up for the workers there, and I went to one of the schools that was built for their kids.

Our planes could have been junk and still given the Axis heartburn, just 'cause there were so damn many of them. That they were so good, and so well flown by their crews, just iced the opposition.

jn