Most certainly not the LaGG-3! That was an awful fighter that even the Russians dubbed the "Guaranteed Varnished Coffin"! But the Russians didn't have much to work with in early WWII so they made do with the obsolete aircraft that they had. And suffered horrendous losses (see Erich Hartman...). Oddly enough, the LaGG-3 is among my favorite WWII planes...who doesn't love an underdog? The Yak-9 and the follow-on Yak-3 (the numbering was out sequence) were excellent lightweight fighters at low to medium altitudes, and were respected by the Luftwaffe pilots.
Was not really aware of that one. Still had the DB601 in it though. It was a complex engine and not very powerful by 1944/45 standards. The fuel injection was a real advantage but not enough to make up for the HP deficit.
They were not defending against wave after wave of bombers at high altitude so lack of performance up there was not a huge loss.
A really good reference on the development of the DB601 and DB605 (as well as the Junkers Jumo and contemporary Allied fighter engines) is The Secret Horsepower Race by Calum Douglas. It's an amazing resource on the topic, but VERY tech-heavy. Highly recommended. https://www.amazon.com/Secret-Horsepower-Race-Western-Development/dp/1911658506/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1R3QZRQQG4UR&keywords=the+secret+horsepower+race&qid=1676600320&sprefix=The+secret+horse%2Caps%2C326&sr=8-1
Most of the Russian air war was at low to medium altitude, like Brian said. One reason the Russians/Soviets liked the P-39/P-63 since they worked fine at lower altitudes.
The Me-109 WAS good enough to win the war, but as you said, you run out of skilled pilots when the Allies send wave after wave of well-trained ones in the best aircraft, guys that were fed well, slept well (for the most part), against a thinning air force that basically ran out of fuel, ammo, pilots and planes, let alone ran out of brain power from the upper command and the morale to win a war. A war on three distinctly different fronts was just stupid. Who knows what would have happened if Hitler didn't go after Russia, and stayed out of N Africa... As far as shooting up the airfields, it amazed me to read how often the Germans simply pulled up stakes and moved to another 'airfield' in the middle of nowhere, grass cow pastures with little around them, and they would do this every couple of weeks... Can't do that today, unless you have a Harrier squadron, but even at that, you can't work on a Harrier in a cow pasture, whereas you can change an ME-109 engine in the dirt back then... Have a laugh - can you even imagine sticking a 16-17 yr old kid in an F-22 today and sending him to war? LOL Let's say you are a smart 18 yr old - what is the last aircraft you could put a kid in with minimal training and expect him to figure it out and fly it? Lag-3 - hence my '?' at the end of the sentence, but there was something 'good' about it, I just don't recall what it was or which book I read about it...
The Russians tried to build jet fighters that could land on unimproved fields. In one instance, they broke the backs of several MiG-21s in the 70s in one day trying to do that on a field that was too muddy. Guess they did not have enough fuel to get back to a hard field, so they just kept on trying. Note one thing on the He-100, very wide landing gear. Both the 109 and Spitfire suffered from their narrow landing gear, especially with students. P-40 was not quite as bad, but all our later AAF fighters had wide-spread main gear.
Those landing gear designs always seemed like such a self inflicted wound. Who couldn't see that coming? Or 30 caliber machine guns? Shooting rifle ammo at airplanes? Navy at one point experimented with a carrier version of the P51. What rocket scientist thought that was a good idea? Test pilots told them it was a really good way to kill young aviators. Made traps in a Corsair look like a PT19 with a hook.
BF-109 landing gear was designed that way (integral with the fuselage) to allow for easier shipping by railroad car. The fuselage would rest on the landing gear and the wings were easily removed/reattached. I'm not sure why they never improved the basic landing gear geometry. It remained a detriment for the entire life of the BF-109 and was the cause of the majority of losses. Spitfire had a similar gear config but did not have nearly as bad of a reputation for takeoff/landing. Maybe the geometry was slightly different? Camber, caster, toe-in and toe-out have a huge effect on how taildraggers ground handle.
All engineering projects have trade offs and airplanes are no different. Shipping convenience or not it was a design feature that was detrimental to the intended use of the aircraft so in my humble opinion it was a dumb idea. It cost them a whole bunch of airplanes. Maybe they should have done a study. Which cost more airplanes? Landing/ground handling accidents or less convenient shipping? Sounds like two parties had an argument and the logistics guy won. A situation many find themselves in and often poorly decided by whoever has the most juice. Maybe its the real reason Udet committed suicide? I am sure the Luftwaffe had a wide range of pilot competency and I suspect it was the less talented or experienced that were breaking them in much the same way our known tricky fighters like P51 and Corsair had takeoff and landing incidents in the hands of less experienced people. High performance military aircraft have never suffered fools well. But thanks for the history lesson.
From what I read, Willy M. refused to put camber in the wheels of the Me 109 like the Spitfire because it would have caused a bump in the wing contour. Killed a lot of student pilots in ground handling incidents. Fragile retraction mechanism, also caused problems.
The story goes that the Bf/Me 109 killed more pilots in training: take-off & landing accidents than in combat. Walter Eichhorn, who was one of the first pilots to fly a restaured Me-109 in the eighties, and have retired only recently, has some experience about the airplane. According to an interview in "Aeroplane Monthly", before trying his hands on it, he went to see Erich Hartmann, to be instructed on how to do it, and what to avoid. Hartmann's advice was: the aeroplane in itself is not tricky, provided you respect its idiosyncrasies, i.e: not applying power and compensating for it with the rudder at the same time: either one, or the other, but not both. https://www.legendseu.com/pages/walter-eichhorn Rgds
Obviously the subsequent La-5 and La-7 must have been pretty good airplanes, because top ace Kozhedub achieved most of his 62 kills in those airplanes. But consider that no. 2 ace Pokryshkin got most of his 59 kills in the P-39!
The thing I always found interesting is as much as Eric Brown felt the FW190 was one of the very best fighters of the war from all countries I seem to remember all the top Aces loved their 109's. One, I do not recall if Hartmann or Galland referred to it as a Scalpel. Maybe it just had a better heater, it was Russia after all. I understand the Mustang heater only really kept one foot warm.
That is a really interesting question. What constitutes "minimal training?" How long before a typical 22 year old ends up in the cockpit of a F-22-- I'm thinking under a year from start of service to flying the airplane, maybe not in a squadron yet? I would think the amount of training required for an F-22 and something like a P-51 wouldn't be all that different, although there would certainly be different areas of emphasis. I do know of someone who was an experienced civilian pilot who flew a Mirage F1 in combat (not air to air) with no training whatsoever. This was obviously not smart, and eventually he realized he needed to stop before he died... I also think it depends on what you intend to do with the F-22. Being able to ferry one somewhere is one thing, and I would guess might not be all that difficult. Being able to successfully dogfight is a different thing altogether, as is being able to drop bombs with any degree of accuracy at all.
FWIW...more Bf/Me 109 stories: How Nazi Germany's Fighter Planes Saved Israel https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/how-nazi-germanys-fighter-planes-saved-israel-17371#:~:text=One%20of%20the%20first%20weapons,in%20the%20Spanish%20Civil%20War.
I had a friend who was a Navy pilot during Vietnam. After the Forrestal burned he was reassigned to NAS Alameda. It was a huge maintenance base during Vietnam. After a time he was made a maintenance test pilot. While he was an A4 and A7 pilot he wound up flying what he referred to as "Every tactical jet in Navy inventory". I gather it required he study the manual and get a verbal intro. Many had no trainer version or simulator, not in those days. He spent his day taking planes out over the Pacific and beating them up. Actually from that and a couple of subsequent assignments he put a lot of time in F8s but he made it clear he would never be allowed to take one aboard ship or into combat, he was only combat qualified in A4 and A7. So its clear Navy had 2 very different types of qualification. He always said that was the very best job he had in the Navy.
FCFs (functional check flights) like he flew are fun because you actually got to use the entire envelope of the aircraft to make sure everything worked. The profiles looked nothing like operational missions and going Mach 2.55 was something normal crews never got to do. Rough on the aircraft, though, so later in life the FCF profiles were severely limited. FCFs were also a chance to practice emergency procedures for real, since the newly glued together aircraft often had hidden problems that only showed up once flown.
I was not thinking of a 22 yr old with specific minimal training in an F22, but a 17-18 yr old with just minimal FLYING training. But the question still remains: you are basically taught what a rudder, flap and aeileron do, how to use them, and what a gun trigger is, and you have to go defend your country.. You have 20 hours of flight time, no radar, none of the avionics or computer stuff, what's the 'most recent' plane you THINK you can fly and feel you won't get immediately killed in? (You're going up against a pilot in the same situation you are in, training-wise, and NO, your time playing Microsoft Flight Sim doesn't count, LOL) Sopwith Camel? Fokker D-VII? Zero? ME-109? P-47? P-51? F-9-F MIG-15-17-19? F-86? MIG-21? Mirage III? I'd even go into the Century Series, but there is no way someone can fly an F-100 or F-104 and not get killed.... I think my limit would be the F-86, MAYBE the MIG-21.... but then reality sets in and I think the Sopwith or Fokker... maybe the ME-109..
In WW-I, the Brits sent pilots into combat with as few as 10 hours total time. The results were not good and included Bloody April (April 1917).
The difference between then and now is back then people had absolutely zero clue about flying - may as well been spaceships from Mars. Today, or for the last 75 years, we kinda grew up flying, watching airplanes fly, so we learn a little by watching, which they could not do 100 years ago.
This is interesting aviation history for those who might not be familiar. The Haganah (Jewish armed forces in Palestine) created a makeshift combat air force (Chel Ha' Avir) by using just about any aircraft and pilots they could obtain. In the spirit of this thread, the Chel Ha'Avir employed some great pilots such as Modi Alon, Eddie Cohen, Lou Lenart (former Corsair pilot and later to be General Manager of the LA Lakers), Milton Rubenfeld (father of Paul "Pee-Wee Herman" Rubens), Maury Mann, Chris MaGee (former Corsair pilot and VMF-214 Blacksheep member) and Sid Antin...just to name a few. And...they initially flew the most gawd-awful bastardization of a Messerschmitt BF-109 that was ever built: the horrendous Avia S-199 Mezek, known as "The Mule". The S-199 had a Junkers Jumo bomber engine instead of the DB-605, and a terribly mismatched propeller. The takeoff and landing characteristics of this plane were said to be "viscous", a real nightmare! I actually really like the S-199...you know I always cheer for the underdog!
