Worst Fighter Plane Of Ww2

Discussion in 'The War In The Air' started by adamcotton, Aug 21, 2005.

  1. adamcotton

    adamcotton Senior Member

    Well, we're discussing the best of the best, so, as a little aside, how about sharing your thoughts on the worst fighter aircraft ever to take to the skies in WW2?

    My immediate thought is the bell P-39 Aircobra. I mean, the engine was behind the pilot, for goodness sake, with an 8ft long crankshaft that stretched all the way under his seat, through the forward fuselage, before connecting with the prop! Apparently, Bell designed it that way as the only means of accommodating the huge 37mm cannon that fired through the prop boss! Trouble was, with all the associated mountings, gearings, lubrication systems, and necessary strenghining of the rear fuselage, the P-39 was so heavy it was a turkey in a dogfight. The RAF formed a single squadron with it, realized it was useless in air combat, so relegated it to ground attack - and then only for three months before withdrawing it from that role too! Having said that, over half the P-39s built were shipped to Russia, where it found favour with the units that operated it, largely because most air combat on the Eastern Front took place at very low level, where the Aircobra was - if not a stellar performer - then at least adequate.

    The Westland Whirlind, too, was originally designed as a high altitude fighter - and was actually considered as a sucessor to the Spitfire! But the lamentable performance of its two Rolls-Royce Perigrine engines ensured that it was confined to ground attack and anti-shipping. In all, only 110 were ever built, serving with only two RAF squadrons...

    Thoughts anybody?
     
  2. sapper

    sapper WW2 Veteran WW2 Veteran

    Many years ago. While in Southampton I worked with the men that built the forerunner of the Spitfire at "Supermarine" I also had the pleasure of helping an old Engineer that was on the "Super" managment and knew all the greats behind that fabulous aircraft. Now I know that is rather getting away from the worst plane, but it is nevertheless interesting.

    For me the worst was the Blenheim twin engined plane, even more so, as one that was captured after Dunkirk, came over the Isle of Purbeck, flew up through the Valley, very low, when we saw it coming, a little group of us waved to the pilot, who promptly opened fire on us.
    Sapper
     
  3. adamcotton

    adamcotton Senior Member

    Wow - must have been a shock! So are you saying it was being flown by a Luftwaffe crew?

    The Spit forerunner you speak of - the S.6 seaplane?
     
  4. sapper

    sapper WW2 Veteran WW2 Veteran

    Yes, the plane was flown by a German crew. they could have a look at anything they wanted, who would fire at a British plane?

    Yes the original Supermarine aircraft. Friend of mine worked on them all. (Charley, he was great at maths!) Supermarine was bombed and burnt out completely. just the steel girderwork left, the other side Southampton water

    The work on the Spits went on unabated, the work spread far and wide. working full tilt night and day, not even stopping for air raids, if it could be helped.

    The manager? of Supermarine had his own little workshop. when he wanted something done outside of his capacity, he would pop down and see me. we sat and nattered for hours, with my coffee flask doing overtime. But that was a long time ago.

    My boss (Still around) introduced him to me, saying "here we are, two kinded spirits"
    Lovely old gentleman.
    Sappe
     
  5. adrian roberts

    adrian roberts Senior Member

    Worst fighter?
    How about the Defiant? Hopeless when attacked by other fighters: fitting a heavy turret and gunner to something with a single Merlin meant it was slow as well as tactically flawed. They managed to chop down a few bombers but no more effectively than a conventional fighter. I don't even think it can be said that we have the benefit of hindsight and the Defiant's flaws weren't obvious at the time: in WW1 they had worked out by mid-1917 that a two seat fighter was most effective if flown with the pilot's gun as the primary armament. (The Bristol F2B was disastrous when fought with the observer's weapon as the primary one, but excellent when the pilot did the fighting and the observer protected his back). Someone at Air Procurement forgot this.

    The Defiant's Naval equivalent, the Blackburn Roc, was even worse, having only a 900hp Perseus. In the BoB one chap in a Roc flew all the way across the Channel duelling with a Heinkel 52 biplane floatplane, and even that combat was indecisive.

    Adrian
     
  6. bigd

    bigd Junior Member

    Originally posted by adamcotton@Aug 21 2005, 09:11 AM

    Wow - must have been a shock! So are you saying it was being flown by a Luftwaffe crew?

    The Spit forerunner you speak of - the S.6 seaplane?
    [post=37885]Quoted post[/post]

    the Ba 349 Natter comes to mind, so does the mc.200 saetta, as well as the Re 2000, last and probably worst was the defiant
     
  7. Kiwiwriter

    Kiwiwriter Very Senior Member

    I'll go with the Boulton Paul Defiant. While the Brewster Buffalo is legendary for its failures, the Finns got great mileage out of it in the Continuation War. The idea of a turret and no forward-firing guns on the Defiant made it pretty ludicrous. They tried it as a nightfighter, and after that, target-towing duties and the like.
     
  8. Dac

    Dac Senior Member

    My picks for worst fighters are the Defiant and Brewster Buffalo. The Buffalo was obselete, especially when compared to the Zero. The Defiant, as has been pointed out did away with the most effective aerial weapon of the time, the pilot using the plane to aim his guns. No forward firing guns was a great handicap. Another nomination would be Me210 for its' terrible handling charateristics.
     
  9. adamcotton

    adamcotton Senior Member

    Well, I'm glad to see this topic has stirred some interest....

    I would wholeheartedly agree that the Defiant and Brewster Buffalo were hopeless fighters. The Defiant succeeded as a fighter for only a few days in early August 1940 when the Germans encountered it for the very first time and, thinking they were attacking Hurricanes, closed in astern and got the full blast of four .303in brownings! However, as soon as they got wise wise to the fact that they were dealing with an entirely different aircraft that had no forward firing armament whatsover, the Defiant had had its chips....

    The Roc was similarly flawed, and ugly too! In fact, all fighters imdigenously produced for the Royal Navy in WW2 suffered from the Admiralty's lack of confidence in pilots' ability to navigate themselves over large tracts of ocean whilst similtaneously flying and fighting. Consequently, the specifications for fleet fighters they issued to aircraft manufacturers always stipulated the incorporation of a second seat for an observer. The result was such failures as the Fairey Fulmar and, later, Firefly. Only the American designed Martlett and Corsair were ever really effective fleet fighters - both single seat, of course!
     
  10. A Potts

    A Potts Member

    How about the Australian made and designed 'Boomerang'.

    I understand that it is the only fighter of the war with not one confirmed kill.

    My Grandfather flew briefly in one, before he was deemed unfit to fly. Although he died before I was born, he said to my father among other things that:

    'It was the only Boomerang in the world that never came back'

    He had a very low opinion of it, as I understand all pilots who the misfortune to fight Zeros in a Boomerang.

    Thanks,
    Aaron
     
  11. WebPilot

    WebPilot Member

    It's a very hard question to answer definitively as the question itself is very wide - really the question need to define what "worst" is being looked at. To exemplify this - the Me/Bf109 could qualify as the worst, if you look at the casualty rate it caused to its own pilots due to its ground handling quirks, though as a weapon clearly it was a great plane. The Defiant was a failure as it was originally intended but that was not due to the inherent aircraft, but due to a faulty strategy that the machine was designed to fill - much as also ocurred with the Me110.

    It's really hard to find a machine that really was a failure in every way though the one that does come to mind is the Me163 Komet. Hard to fly, liable to explode on landing and usually limited by its poor range to one firing pass at such a high speed differential that it was almost impossible to score any meaningful hits.
     
  12. Kitty

    Kitty Very Senior Member

    I think the worst fighter for what it was designed for, has to be the Beaufighter. An OK aircraft, but outperformed by everythinh else. Passable as a nightfighter, but not as the day fighter it was built as.
     
  13. Kyt

    Kyt Very Senior Member

    I think the worst fighter for what it was designed for, has to be the Beaufighter. An OK aircraft, but outperformed by everythinh else. Passable as a nightfighter, but not as the day fighter it was built as.

    I think those who flew it over Burma, and those who received support from it, would strongly disagree. It served very well with 177 and 211 Squadrons.

    From the 211 Squadron website:

    "The pugnacious Beaufighter derived, through the Beaufort design, from Blenheim antecedents. Equally at home over land or sea, the Beaufighter was highly successful as a heavy strike fighter, as a night fighter, and in the reconnaissance and torpedo attack roles..... n the Burma theatre, the firepower of the rocket-equipped Mark X was put to effective use in the strike fighter role, on long-range intruder operations against Japanese transport and communications."

    Damn fine site:

    No. 211 Squadron RAF
     
  14. Kitty

    Kitty Very Senior Member

    I was thinking in Western Europe. Sorry.
     
  15. Kyt

    Kyt Very Senior Member

    I was thinking in Western Europe. Sorry.


    It's that "Forgotten War" again!! ;)
     
  16. WebPilot

    WebPilot Member

    I think the worst fighter for what it was designed for, has to be the Beaufighter. An OK aircraft, but outperformed by everythinh else. Passable as a nightfighter, but not as the day fighter it was built as.

    There was something of an obsession in the late 30s and early war years with "the heavy fighter" - Me110, Beaufighter, Breda 88, Whirlwind etc. Some of these were perfectly fine aircraft but the basic flaw was in the concept. As combat swiftly proved, the role of interceptor fighter and long range escort fighter remained the province of the nimble single engined fighter and really has remained so until the capabilities of radar and the AA missile has progressed to a position that the aircraft might not need to be engaged with the target at close range.

    The Beau was a good machine, but not a day fighter - though in its defence by the time the type was entering service, the concept of the heavy fighter had largely already been seen to be flawed and apart from some limited operations during the summer of 1940 with the Fighter Development Unit at Tangmere, it was seen as far more suited to use as an intruder and night fighter.
     
  17. spidge

    spidge RAAF RESEARCHER

    This from an Australian site: Digger History.

    Bristol Beaufighter; the "forgotten" fighter of WW2 [​IMG]
    [​IMG] To the Japanese, the Beaufighter became known as "The Whispering Death" which gives some idea of the speed at which one could suddenly appear, strike and turn for home. Beaufighters were also flown by the air forces of Britain, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and, in small numbers, the US.
    Britain's lack of long-range heavy fighters when the war started was a source of acute embarrassment to the RAF single-engined interceptors such as the Hurricane and Spitfire lacked the endurance for effective standing patrols, and it was soon discovered that the heavy long-range fighter would be invaluable to perform a wide variety of tasks. The result was a piece of true British improvisation--the Bristol Beaufighter, which entered service a year after the outbreak of war, at a time when it was most sorely needed.

    [​IMG]

    Built as a company-funded long-range fighter (using major components from the earlier Beaufort torpedo-bomber), the prototype Beaufighter first flew on July 17,1939. This was little more than eight months after the design had been initiated. Exactly two weeks earlier, before the first flight, a production contract for 300 machines had been placed to specification F. 17/39. This seemingly desperate measure by the Air Ministry was, by 1938 to 1939, not uncommon, as it helped speed up the production of much-needed combat planes.

    The fact that a heavy twin-engined fighter such as the Beaufighter was available as soon as the late autumn of 1940 was largely due to the foresight and enterprise of the Bristol Aeroplane Company in envisaging the probable need for a high-performance long-range fighter capable of undertaking duties of a more aggressive nature than those foreseen by official specifications. At the end of 1938 L. G. Frise and his design team began the design of what was virtually a fighter variant of the Beaufort general reconnaissance and torpedo-bomber. The initial proposal was framed, as far as possible, to meet the requirements of specification F.11/37, and envisaged an aeroplane using a large proportion of Beaufort components, including the wings, tail assembly and undercarriage, a pair of Hercules radial engines and carrying a battery of four 20-mm. Hispano cannon. The economy of the proposal was of obvious appeal to the government, struggling to meet the vast requirements of a major rearmament program, and, as the Type 156, four prototypes were ordered.
    Bristol Beaufighter T.F.X Dimensions: Wing span: 57 ft. 10 in. (17.64 m) Length: 41 ft. 4 in. (12.59 m) Height: 15 ft. 10 in. (4.84 m) Weights: Empty: 15,592 lb (7,072 kg) Maximum: 25,400 lb. (11,521 kg) Disposable Load: 9,808 lb. (4,448 kg) Performance: Maximum Speed: 305 m.p.h. (490 km/h) @ sea-level.
    320 m.p.h. (514 km/h) @ 10,000 ft. (3,048 m) Service Ceiling: 19,000 ft. (5,791 m) (without torpedo) Range: 1,400 miles (2,253 km) with torpedo and normal fuel.
    1,750 miles (2,816 km) with torpedo and long-range tanks. Powerplant: Two Bristol Hercules XVII fourteen-cylinder two-row sleeve-valve radial engines rated at 1,725 h.p. (1,286 kw) @ 2,900 r.p.m. for take-off and
    1,395 h.p. (1,040 kw) @ 2,400 r.p.m. at 1,500 ft. (457 m). Armament: Four 20-mm. Hispano cannon in the fuselage nose and six 0.303-in. machine-guns in the wings and one 0.303-in. Vickers "K" or Browning gun in the dorsal position. One 18-in. torpedo externally under fuselage. Eight rocket projectiles could be carried as alternative to the wing guns.



    Or from another:

    http://www.military.cz/british/air/war/fighter/beaufighter/history.htm

    To the Japanese, the Beaufighter became known as "The Whispering Death" (not be confused with "Whistling Death F4U Corsair) which gives some idea of the speed at which one could suddenly appear, strike and turn for home. Beaufighters were also flown by the air forces of Australia, New Zealand and, in small numbers, the US. In Britain they remained flying as target tugs throughout the 1950s.
    When the last Beaufighter (SR919) left the Bristol Aeroplane Company's Weston-super-Mare works on September 21, 1945, a total of 5,562 aircraft of this type had been produced in the United Kingdom. Of these some 1,063 were Mark Vls and 2,231 were Mark Xs. During its operational career it had played a prime role in defeating the Luftwaffe's night "blitz" of 1940-1941, and it had operated in every major campaign of the war, carrying out the last operational sortie of the European war, a strike against German shipping in the Skagerrak, and serving with distinction in the Pacific until the capitulation of Japan. The Beaufighter may have been the product of improvisation but it was a remarkably successful one.
     
  18. Kitty

    Kitty Very Senior Member

    I think if she had been given more powerful engines the Beaufighter would have held her own in all roles. But the Hercules engines just weren't enough.
     
  19. Monty's Double

    Monty's Double Junior Member

    With the benefit of hindsight it seems ludicrous that the Defiant was expected to be able to fly alongside an enemy bomber and rake it with gunfire from the turret completely unopposed, but some poor sods had to go up and try to do just that. I'm surprised that this even got beyond the drawing board but the idea of a turret fighter was in vogue at the time.
     
  20. Herroberst

    Herroberst Senior Member

    I agree with the Defiant. Although not a fighter, Here's my contender...at least with the 163 you had a chance to make it back.

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]
     

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