I do not have an opinion on"The most overated aircraft". If this is a bad thread don"t post in it. I hope this is a good threqad, I just can not think, which plane is #1 overated plane in ww2. What is it?:noidea:
There can never be a definitive answer, but I admit I am a sucker for this kind of debate.... I've said before on this site and its predecessor: my candidate would be the Swordfish. It achieved some great things, but there was nothing it could do that a monoplane couldn't do better. Except operate off the small escort carriers I suppose, but no-one thought of that when it entered production. If the Japanese and Americans had monoplane torpedo bombers, why couldn't we? Is it anything to be proud of, that we were the last nation to use biplanes in combat? And anyway, what did it do that was so great? Taranto of course, but in the Bismarck attack, just two hits were scored from twenty Swordfish, and the "Channel Dash" attack was a glorious failure - which wouldn't have seemed that glorious to the men involved at the time. Just how many other times were Swordfish actually in action? I seem to remember Warspite's Swordfish floatplane scored a torpedo hit, but I can't remember what on.
Overrated? That's a tough one. It would be easier to think of poor performers, but poor performers with a good reputation. You might have me here.... Cheers Owen
Swordfish were used extensively in the Med, particularly night shipping strikes from Malta and agent delivery/pick up in North Africa. As much as I love the thing and the men who flew her, being that slow and woefully (defensively) armed did not give a lot of confidence if engaged by fighters. However, she was remarkably manoeuverable as evidenced by Charles Lamb's solo dicing with Stukas during the attack that almost sank Illustrious. Lamb was among the Stukas "at lightning speed" (!) and, admittedly, they were Stukas...
I agree with you all, I was on another website and we had the exact same discussion. In the other website I said the same thing you all said about the Swordfish, they threw me out in the snow!! I left that website for that they did not agree with anything but themselves, very few people on that website agreed with me. I am still a member but I like this website much better.
Another over-rated aircraft was the dive-bomber version of the Ju87 Stuka. Great things were expected of it, but (as was discussed in a thread on this site a while ago) most of the bombing that did the damage in the invasions of Poland and France was done by conventional bombers. And of course it was very vulnerable to enemy fighters. Dive bombing as a technique was not as easy as it sounds. Stukas did damage HMS Illustrious, but didn't achieve a lot else. However, in Russia the ground attack version was much more successful, providing it had fighter cover, especially in the hands of the great Hans-Ulrich Rudel. The Me110 was also a disappointment; it had been intended as the Luftwaffe's elite fighter, but as we know the 109 proved far more useful. But lets not be too smug about this - the Spitfire was intended as a stop-gap fighter; if the war had not started when and how it did, it would have been replaced by the Whirlwind and Beaufighter, the equivalent of the Me110. In the end, these aircraft proved to be effective in the attack role (and the Beau as a night-fighter) but they would have been no good as air superiority fighters.
I'll probably get yelled at but I've always thought the B-17 was over-rated. Claimed to a wonder bomber, defensively strong and able to carry out pin-point bombing. Schweinfurt soon put that to sleep. Even its bombload for long range missions was pretty poor. On an equivelant long range mission a Mosquito could carry the same amount (and deliver it more accurately) And the Japanese Zero? Excellent range and maneuverability. Anyting else? Even the Buffaloes could shoot it down once they figured out that height, sharp diving attacks and heavier calibre guns could beat it.
The Good The Bad ,The Ugly, then The Most Gorgeous Forget the bad ones, remember the good ones. Before anyone starts I know all about the Hurricane, but I can tell you the Spitfire gave the germans the skitters. We can argue that its reputation was unjustified but even though they would fight the Hurricane man to man most of them high-tailed it when Spitfires showed up. And our pilots fearless attacks made sure they went! We owe them Cheers Keith
I ran into the same opinion on the other website, me and some others shot this opinion down, I am not mad. The replies we made against the opinion were that , we named all the types that were good B-17"s , and we said be more specific about which B-17, and that other types were good. On the other website there was aq ww2 vet, his dad was also a ww2 vet, He said that his dad was a bombadier on a B-17 G. He said they were a good plane.
I think a certain amount of "romanticism" has been attributed to the B17, more for the deeds of the men who flew them than to the machine itself. As a member of Bomber Command my father held the airman of the U.S.A.A.F. in high esteem for doing in daylight what he was doing at night.
All this shows is that flying bombers over heavily defended enemy territory was a highly dangerous occupation for any type that was slower than the enemy fighters. After all, the Lancaster had the highest loss rate of any RAF type - 57% (not sure if thats combat plus accidents or combat alone) but no-one suggests it was a bad aircraft, just that it was used the most intensively on the most dangerous missions. The Norden bombsight on the B17 was over-rated! It was claimed, at least for propaganda purposes, that it enabled a bomb to be dropped into a barrel from 20,000 feet. In reality, dropping into a hundred-yard circle was just about achieved by master bombardiers in perfect weather over Californian test ranges. But considerably less was achieved by 19 year-old bombardiers over Germany, in turbulent cloudy conditions when there was no way of knowing the wind speed and direction at the target and people were shooting at you. And the B17 was originally developed to attack the ships of an invasion fleet if the USA was attacked from the Atlantic (Which of course would have been British ships. US Naval policy for the Atlantic until well into the 1930's assumed that Britain would be the aggressor - so much for the "special relationship"!). But even if this did happen, the chances of the B17s hitting ships using conventional bombing from medium altitude was zilch. Billy Mitchell was right but for the wrong reasons - his experiments proved only that it was possible after repeated attempts to sink a ship at anchor by bombing. Very few ships that were free to manouvre were sunk by this method in the war. Look how many Tallboys were aimed by elite squadrons (9 and 617) at the Tirpitz which was at anchor - only about three did any damage. It needed torpedoes or divebombers or guided missiles to sink a ship at sea.
I have heard that B-17S could drop a bomb in a pickle barrel maybe thay meant a Pond or even bigger. They exagerate.:madgrin:
I think it'd be fair to say that about any aircraft, WH, but there are just too many variables to affect something doing it all of the time!
The ME-110 was a major disapointment it was half decent ONLY HALF!! for an air-ground fighter. But otherwise it sucked.hwell::gossip:
Not a bad night fighter, WH, perhaps a little underpowered with the addition of the radar and aerials etc but effective nonetheless. While not a top escort fighter, it proved adaptable. I find it hard to pick an overrated aircraft as such a reputation only really lasts until proven otherwise i.e. once the aircraft is operational. Look at the Manchester for example - lots of promise but more or less a flop - highly regarded until it flew ops where it was found wanting. Overrated with hindsight! Are there any wartime aircraft that have benefitted from positive yet undeserved "press" or status post-war? These would surely class as overrated after the fact. I can't think of any off hand.
The interest in this question has been to force a valuable re-assesment of one's knowledge base regarding various types and their overall contribution(s) in view of their characteristics and performance. I'm a bit nonplussed and have come to the conclusion, like others, that 'over-rated' is a rather difficult epithet to apply to any aircraft. During a hunt for naval vessels with zero ceiling (e.g. the Channel Dash), I would appreciate the ole sturdy and steady, but slow, Stringbag under my butt (ask the Italian navy their opinion of the plane as it relates to Taranto). I heartily disagree that this airplane was over-rated, in fact, I view it as an overachiever. As for the B-17, it did what it was intended to do, to cripple production of fuels and lubricants, all accomplished during daylight and in concert with bomber command's nocturnal actions. I wouldn't confuse over-rating with romance, nor with pejoratives related to the Fortress's small bomb-bay. It was rugged, it performed, and it won the respect of its aircrews. The Ju-87 was an underachiever, erroneously imbued with the outrageous expectations of the successful conquest of western Europe in 1940 in which it contributed. I'll go out on a limb here and proffer an opinion that I'm a bit ambivalent about (but provide for dialectic's sake), but what about the Ju-88? I know of no major campaigns that highlight the singular and spectacular activity of the aircraft, which was outshined by the outdated He-111 across the board. Fw-190's eventually took on much of the tactical bombing. The 88's bomb load was modest, its range so-so, and its defense underwhelming - yet, the Luftwaffe placed its focused attention on this sole type to shoulder the bomber war offensive. It could only deliver when moved to combat British night ops. On the American side, I'll stay out on the limb and suggest that the Corsair's tally sheet has been exaggerated - the Navy pawned it off to the Marines and FAA, and it didn't do much save for action over the Solomon's Slot. The Hellcat did the yeoman's share of the fighting and destroying. The F4U came into its own postwar and in Korea, to be fair. Highly under-rated and respected kites remain the Hurricane and the P-47, Jug (shunned by 8th FG's except for the 56th), which was a wonderful weapon in the 9th Air Force's hands, aiding considerably in the destruction of ground forces along with the other Hawker aircraft. The biggest dud of the war (nonachiever), hands-down: the He-177. Regards, Fix
Hi Fixel 101.:hi: The Corsair did no good for the Navey because it had a terrible problem with crasdhing while landing on a carrier. But the Marines did wonders with the Corsair it was so agile, manueverability rocked, it was fast, it had firepower 6x 50 cal, it could take a decent beating, it could carry some bombs.:nod::biggrin1:
