Top 10 Worst Aircraft of WWII

[Clinton Huxley]

One for KLR and Zilla. Blimey, there are some absolute cows in there, with Blighty well represented....


http://listverse.com/2011/04/04/top-10- ... rld-war-2/Anything missing?

[klr]

Breda 88: check!

Assuming we are looking at aircraft that actually entered service, then I'd add:

Saro Lerwick
Avro Manchester (good design, crap engines)
Heinkel 177 ("The Flaming Coffin", etc.)
Commonwealth Boomerang - a "panic" fighter, OK for Forward Air Control (FAC)

The Manchester and the He 177 both used "paired" engines, each pair driving a single propeller. The Brits eventually redesigned it as the Lancaster, and "the rest is history".

Many more to come, later ...

[klr]

... oh, the P-40. A mediocrity at best, but some 14,000 were built.

[colubridae]

Bolton-paul defiant

[klr]

Bolton-paul defiant

A tough act to follow.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

... oh, the P-40. A mediocrity at best, but some 14,000 were built.

In May of 1940 WSC was begging for Tomahawks.

Mustang P-51A.

[klr]

The Caudron-Renault C.714:


... light fighters: Not a good idea.

[SteveB]

Those Italians made some shit aircraft.

[FBM]

Bolton-paul defiant

A tough act to follow.

Sure sounded good in the propaganda newsreels, didn't it? I don't know anything about it, but if the long blurb is right, it wasn't designed for dogfights in the first place.

[cowiz]

Dunning Kruger having kicked in, and knowing precisely nothing about the subject matter in hand, I totally disagree with all 10 picks and I would have chosen some other aircraft. Perhaps a Sopwith Camel as I've heard of that one.

[klr]

Dunning Kruger having kicked in, and knowing precisely nothing about the subject matter in hand, I totally disagree with all 10 picks and I would have chosen some other aircraft. Perhaps a Sopwith Camel as I've heard of that one.

Yup, If it had still been around in WW II, it would have been right up there all right ...

[John_fi_Skye]

Perhaps controversially, I'd add the Ju-87. Once everybody realised it wasn't as good as its hype suggested, its crews suffered heavy losses and it had to be deployed carefully.

[klr]

Perhaps controversially, I'd add the Ju-87. Once everybody realised it wasn't as good as its hype suggested, its crews suffered heavy losses and it had to be deployed carefully.

Dedicated ground attack aircraft in WW II usually needed plenty of fighter cover - the Ju 87, the Henschel 129, the Sturmovik, Vultee Vengeance, and so on. Either that or such general air superiority that cover was not needed. The same was true of bomber aircraft in general. That's why the RAF switched to night bombing, over Germany and why the US Air Force suffered such bad losses until good escort fighters were deployed.

The Ju 87 wasn't as good as the early propaganda, but it wasn't a failure either. It was only a failure relative to the early hype IMHO.

It also depends on the details of the environment an aircraft fights in. The Douglas Dauntless - a direct counterpart to the Ju 87 - operated mainly against Japanese aircraft which were so lightly armoured that even the rear gunners with two light machine guns scored plenty of victories. It was also strongly enough built itself (like most US Navy aircraft) that it was hard to shoot down given the light-ish Japanese armament. Close-in dogfighting (which the Japanese always favoured) also tended to negate pure speed advantages of fighter aircraft*. When the Dauntless was used in other theatres, it was much more vulnerable.

*As late as the Vietnam War, the piston-engined Skyraider scored a couple of victories against supersonic MiG jets.

My 2 cents anyway.

[John_fi_Skye]

Perhaps controversially, I'd add the Ju-87. Once everybody realised it wasn't as good as its hype suggested, its crews suffered heavy losses and it had to be deployed carefully.

Dedicated ground attack aircraft in WW II usually needed plenty of fighter cover - the Ju 87, the Henschel 129, the Sturmovik, Vultee Vengeance, and so on. Either that or such general air superiority that cover was not needed. The same was true of bomber aircraft in general. That's why the RAF switched to night bombing, over Germany and why the US Air Force suffered such bad losses until good escort fighters were deployed.

The Ju 87 wasn't as good as the early propaganda, but it wasn't a failure either. It was only a failure relative to the early hype IMHO.

It also depends on the details of the environment an aircraft fights in. The Douglas Dauntless - a direct counterpart to the Ju 87 - operated mainly against Japanese aircraft which were so lightly armoured that even the rear gunners with two light machine guns scored plenty of victories. It was also strongly enough built itself (like most US Navy aircraft) that it was hard to shoot down given the light-ish Japanese armament. Close-in dogfighting (which the Japanese always favoured) also tended to negate pure speed advantages of fighter aircraft*. When the Dauntless was used in other theatres, it was much more vulnerable.

*As late as the Vietnam War, the piston-engined Skyraider scored a couple of victories against supersonic MiG jets.

My 2 cents anyway.

Yep. But I note you say "dedicated". Ground-attack variants of plenty of other aircraft did better: Hurricanes, Typhoons, P-47s and Ta-152/Fw-190s among them. Speed had a lot to do with that, no doubt: the Ju-87 was terribly sluggish, and having a single 7.9mm for defence didn't compensate.

[HomerJay]