Thank you for the numbers Bill. I was correct about the B-24, but a few 1000’s off on number.
I had no idea so many Spits were produced. Pretty staggering, but then they only really had a few fighters: Hurricane, Typhoon, and Temptest to name a few. I imagine there were more Spits produced then all of them combined?
I realized that I hadn’t actually included the website URL. I have since corrected that.
Yeah, the Spitfire numbers alone are a bit higher than the rest combined, at least if you only count fighters. Spitfires are certainly one of the more popular fighters around, much beloved by the Brits, and many others. 'Course the Hurricane outgunned the Spitfire, but never seemed to capture people’s imaginations. Probably due to the name. Spitfire is such a sexy name!
Well I went back and checked and I was off but not totally incorrect…according to Wikipedia the Russian Po-2 was the most produced at over 40,000 uniits, the Stormovik comes in 2nd at 36,183 and the 109 3rd at 35,000 units…your Spitfire numbers are way too high…Wiki says the Fw 190 and spit both came in at around 20k…[
Actually, not “my” numbers, but the website that I’ve now linked to properly. Wiki has numerous entries on the Spitfire, all of which show different numbers. Who knows what the truth is? I’ve heard the 60K figure for the Sturmovik, but also have read that those numbers was more Soviet creative bookkeeping than actual production numbers. Uncle Joe probably said “Build 60,000 of them” and they just couldn’t tell him any other number.
There is a LOT of information on the Interweb, and some of it is even true! [:D]
Yeah, what blows my mind is that they actually built 40k plus of the PO-2, which is really a POS a/c—and a bi-plane no less…it was in production from 1928 to 1959! So if you want to take into account units/years it is a whole different ballgame…
The list I reference, if correct—and I believe it is fairly accurate, depicts the 109 as the most produced fighter a/c of all-time, as the two of the three a/c above it are Russian utilty/ground-attack a/c…and the top of the list is the Cessna 172, at 43,00 plus a/c built from1956 thru present!!!
By the way, the most produced jet would be the MiG 15 at over 18,000 airframes produced…
Im reading chuck yeagers autobiography atm and at one point he says there were no shortage of german aircraft, just pilots. Some of his “kills” resulted from catching gun camera footage of aircraft colliding trying to get out of his way. He also says something about finding out later that standing orders were to save yourself and forget the aircraft?
Experienced pilots and fuel were far more scarce than airframes…
Have a look at To Win the Winter Sky sometime, by Danny Parker. The prime focus of this book covers German air operations associated with the Ardennes Offensive. But it also goes into great detail on events leading up to the Bulge and the aftermath of Bodenplatte. The fall miracle recounts how Galland painstakingly rebuilt the Jagdwaffe (fighter arm) in a plan to hit the American Daylight Bomber offensive with a huge concentration (1000+) of fighters a la Schweinfurt and give them a bloody nose of the same proportions as had occurred a year earlier. Between Speer’s production miracles and Galland’s emphasis on fighter pilot flight training the numbers were attained. But fuel was always in shortage. Planes were towed rather than taxied before and after flights. All in all a very good read on the end of the effective Luftwaffe in the West in 1944/45.
You can, but I wouldn’t. That stuff goes on thick and rough, it’s designed as a cheap, all purpose primer. Depending on what scale you build you might wind up obscuring details with that stuff rather than bringing them out. I don’t prime, if you prepare your surface properly you shouldn’t need to, but if you feel that you need to, go with Tamiya Super Fine primer, much better suited to the task than Krylon or the cheapie brands.
Ok so in the case of this P-40B I am doing the camo colors are dark earth and dark green.
Whose paints should I use? Testors or Tamiya?
I see that many folks are also using letters and numbers to identify the colors. Where can I get a list of wich colors go with wich numbers?
I mean I’m sure the different paint makers colors do differ so how do I know I am using the right dark green or dark earth?
Thanks.
If you are using a brush, stay away from Tamiya, it is very tricky to apply by hand. If you are air brushing you will find arguments both ways so there is a lot of personal opinion there (assuming by Testors you mean Model Master and not the square bottles). Some absolutely hate the Model Master paints, while the biggest complaint I read about Tamiya is the lack of colors.
I use Model Master Acryl along with a few other brands but don’t do a lot of airbrushing, so I wouldn’t listen to any advice I have there if I offered it. [:D]
For me primer varies with subject, when I use spray cans I always primer first (usually Krylon primer), when I use acrylic hobby paints I rarely prime.
http://www.ipmsstockholm.org/helpdesk.asp#color_charts
is a good place to start. One chart is color-to-product, the other is product vs. product.
I use “Wal-Mart” primers all the time, have for 35 years or so… It doesn’t obscure details unless you apply it heavily, same as any other paint… If it “pebbles” and has a rough-to-the-touch texture, it’s likely that you held it too far away, but a few swipes with some 600-grit wet-or dry and water will fix that in about 30 seconds… I even use the grey primer for a color coat for USAAF Neutral Grey… It’s pretty close…
However, there’s no real need to prime a model anyway unless you are applying a light color over dark plastic or using metalics… If it’s molded in grey or something like that, you can skip the primer…
I always thought this was the case anyway. And according to this, Spitfire production was just over 22,000 if i am reading it right.
On the eastern front the Luftwaffe’s primary fighter was the Fw-190. The Me-109 didn’t do well at low altitude and therefore was mainly used on the other fronts. Air combat on the eastern front was almost exclusivly at low altitude. The P-40 supplied by the USA to the Soviet Union out performed the Me-109 at low altitude, while the Me-109 was better at medium and high altitude.
Not exactly…typically there were only a few Gruppen of 190’s on the Eastern Front at any one time. They were much more in demand for Reich defense duties because they were more heavily armed and better able to deal with tackling the Viermots. JG 52 was the only unit to spend it’s whole career in the East after Barbarossa and it never operated the 190. JG 54 and JG 51 each had a Gruppe equipped with 190’s and a few other units rotated in and out but the 109 was the work horse in the Ost.
The 109 a poor performer at low altitude? No, I think you’re confusing the fact the 109 performed better above 20,000 ft than the 190 since the DB was a water-cooled, supercharged engine. The BMW radial engine of the 190 suffered at a high altitude because of the lack of a supercharger. The 109 was a competent performer at low level, a water cooled in-line engine will perform just fine on the deck.
The 109 also out-performed the P-40 in nearly every measurable category. The 109G-2 was faster and more manuverable than the P-40’s it was facing and they shot them down in droves. I love the P-40 but in '42 and '43 they were no match for the Messerschmitt. The Yak’s were a different story and could engage the 109 on equal footing but this wasn’t the case with the P-40.
The Me-109G was likely not more maneuverable than the P-40 on the horizontal, especially in prolonged sustained turns, because it tended to bleed speed on level turns… Spiralling down it did better, but that usually meant giving up on shooting the pursuer, since being below makes this near impossible…
The Me-109G was more of an Eastern Front fighter in late 1944: By then, 70% of Western Front fighters were FW-190As, which was more competitive in sustained turns vs the P-47D and P-51s… The FW-190A was simply better, period, and the Me-109G would have been phased out if the FW-190A had better handling at high altitudes above 21 000 ft, where the bombers were…
The Me-109G was best used on the vertical as a high speed dive and climb fighter, but was cornered into using the high speed spiral climb against the better vertical performance of higher flying US fighters, which could use their extra cruising altitude to negate the better Me-109G sustained climb by zooming up to it after diving… The Me-109G was a poor turn fighter that could barely match the P-51 in sustained turns, and had no hope at all in left turns vs the P-47 in prolonged turns…
The P-51 was very close to the Me-109G, but, by lowering the power and dropping its flaps, it could gain in sustained turns with the prop pitch set on coarse at lower speeds. Maybe the Me-109G would again be close if it did the same, but, as I said, the Me-109G was actually more often used as a high speed vertical maneuvering fighter. “A Floret” in the words of Gunther Rall…
Despite some tests done claiming the contrary, the sustained turning ability of the P-47D, in actual real-life combat, was superior to both the P-51 and the Me-109G, even with its deceptive wider initial radius… KG 200’s conclusion on an early P-47D Razorback’s performance was unequivocal: “The P-47 out-turns our Bf-109G”
The FW-190A was another kettle of fish, and had poor high speed handling, but was the only mass-produced Luftwaffe fighter to out-match the P-47D in sustained turns, though not by much vs the early Razorback to left. Again, the FW-190A had a wider initial radius of turn than a Spitfire, but if an immediate solid hit was not achieved by the British fighter (within around the first 360°), the Spitfire would then almost inevitably fall behind and be caught in level turns by the FW-190A… (The Spitfire was in fact not competitive at all with the FW-190A in sustained turns, and not with the Hurricane either, which could out-turn the Spitfire but not the FW-190A in the words of Canadian Hurricane pilot John Weir: Many other British, Russian and German sources all confirm this, usually pointing out to precisely the same peculiar FW-190A handling features, like its poor tail-down “sinking” or wing-drop “snapping” high speed handling…)
The FW-190D was less maneuverable in sustained turns than the A, but climbed better. One Allied pilot in 1946 felt the loss of handling clearly was too great for the gains in performance…
The FW-190A was truly “it” on the Western Front, and was only limited by poor high altitude handling and dreadful high speed handling at any altitude, which made the Me-109G complementary when going high or fast…
In general, the actual performance relationship of all these famous fighters is shockingly misunderstood if my reading of thousands of actual combat accounts is any guide (1300 of them for the P-51 and P-47 can be found in one place if you google “Mike Williams WWII Aircraft Performance”: I did read them all)… I know from discussing this with several Aeronautic engineers that they do not recognize the effect of nose length leverage and the slight thrust slanting (caused by the turn’s curvature causing slight assymetrical thrust compression) to increase the wingload when the prop’s thrust is beaten by tilting it back when changing the angle of attack… This adds easily around 20-30% to the entire wingload, which is why reducing power (or a shorter nose) helps prolonged multiple 360° turning at low speed… The nose location of the thrust is the basic cause of this, and this does not really apply to jets for obvious reasons, which is why the effect is still ignored…
Ignoring the P-38 and P-40, the two most able US and German turn fighters in the West were the FW-190A and the P-47D… Again contrary to the usual dogma, boom and zoom fighting was more an Eastern front and Pacific Theater staple than a Western European one, especially in 1944-45…
Gaston
Here is a few links to back up the above…:
Reducing power does increase the sustained turn rate up to a point:
http://www.spitfireperformance.com/mustang/combat-reports/339-hanseman-24may44.jpg
The FW-190A does “Inevitably offers turning combat at a minimum speed”:
http://www.lonesentry.com/articles/ttt/russian-combat-fw190.html
Note also here, in the above Russian front-line evaluation, the very poor vertical, dive pull-out and high speed handling of the FW-190A, consistent with all combat accounts, and contradictory to Eric Brown"s conclusion as to tactics, but not some of his OWN descriptions: “Care must be taken not to kill speed by sinking on dive pull-out, or the FW-190A will be very vulnerable on the dive pull-out exit”…
Why recommend vertical fighting then?
The FW-190A out-turns the Spitfire Mk V and the Me-109 in sustained turns (Johnny Johnson opinion, note “vertical turn” here is vintage lingo for “vertical bank turns”):
http://img30.imageshack.us/img30/4716/jjohnsononfw190.jpg
British evaluations determined the Spitfire Mk V to turn the same as a Mk IX… The Mk IX could only use its superior climb and dive to defeat the Spitfire Mk V in mock combat, and it was likely the same way it redressed the balance vs the FW-190A, since it could only out-turn it in the initial part of the turn, but not sustain that superior smaller radius in prolonged turns…
Squadron leader Alan Deere account: -Squadron Leader Alan Deere, (Osprey Spit MkV aces 1941-45, Ch. 3, p. 2: “Never had I seen the Hun stay and fight it out as these Focke-Wulf pilots were doing… In Me-109s the Hun tactic had always followed the same pattern- a quick pass and away, sound tactics against Spitfires and their SUPERIOR TURNING CIRCLE. Not so these 190 pilots: They were full of confidence…”
(8 to 1 for the FW-190s that day…)
Hurricane pilot John Weir account: "“A Hurricane was built like a truck, it took a hell of a lot to knock it down. It was very manoeuvrable, much more manoeuvrable than a Spit, so you could, we could usually outturn a Messerschmitt. They’d, if they tried to turn with us they’d usually flip, go in, at least dive and they couldn’t. A Spit was a higher wing loading…”
“The Hurricane was more manoeuvrable than the Spit and, and the Spit was probably, we (Hurricane pilots) could turn one way tighter than the Germans could on a, on a, on a Messerschmitt, but the Focke Wulf could turn the same as we could and, they kept on catching up, you know.”
“Kept on catching up” is a clear reference to sustained turning…
Just note that when the FW-190A is assumed to be a vertical dive and climb fighter, and not an excellent slow-speed horizontal turn fighter, just about everyone who knew anything about it during WWII is being ignored…
There are quite a few things here the conventional math does not allow for, and it has nothing to do with pilot skills or perception…
Gaston