Why so many German WW II armor subjects?

I know that the RAF used the Allison-engined versions to good effect. I've researched the wartime history of my old unit, 4 Sqn, and found that they created havoc on the continent on their "armed reconaissance" missions! However, I would have thought that in 1944 onwards, the P-51D was more use as an air-superiority fighter.

It is a popularly held belief that the Allison-engined Mustangs were no good and it was only when the Merlin-engined versions became available that the aircraft became useful. That isn't the impression I get from reading the wartime logbooks of 4 Sqn. They were *very* happy with their mounts. The squadron was engaged on recce missions and so the priority was to get the camera footage home, rather than stay and engage in combat. Time and again the logbooks have details of attempted interceptions where the Mustang pilots simply opened their throttles and walked away from the German fighters. The Germans ended up having to create quite complex ambushes to catch the Mustangs, but even when caught in such an ambush, the Mustang pilots could usually just simply run through. One 4 Sqn pilot was of the opinion that their Mustangs were the fastest things in the sky at the time.

Now the story seems to be that the Allison Mustangs were the best flying machines, and the quality degraded after the Merlin was dropped in, but high altitude performance was the most important factor. Interesting that the RAF was still happily using Mustang I's well into

1945 for low level tac/r.

Hah, I like that attempt at a semblance of free will. Yeah right, I'll "let" her. Ha! I say. It sounds like that old "we're just advancing in another direction" thing :-)

On May 10, 12:52=A0pm, snipped-for-privacy@some.domain wrote:> - Hide quoted text ->

1210370406 snipped-for-privacy@alibistextweb.com...> >>> Just why do kit manufacturers of armor models put out so many German> >>> WW II subjects?> >>>

There's a lot more armor than some sub-variant of a Mark IV or> >>>

Panther, and more soft-> >>> skinned vehicles than a Kubelwagen, so what's the deal? There's> >>> modern U.S., Israeli,> >>> Soviet/ Russian, British, etc out there, and in a lot of cases you> >>> see that stuff used on the> >>> news, or see it on the History Channel or the Military Channel. What> >>> would it take to get> >>> more modern armor subjects available?> > >> In addition to weapons you need targets - what's there for all those> >> low flying P-47 and P-51 models to shoot at if they stop building> >> Kraut armor?> > >Erm... =A0 Aren't we forgetting something?> > > =A0Typhoon?> > >And were P-51s actually used in the ground attack role? =A0I know that one>

doubts> >that even six .50cal guns could cause that amount of damage.>

busters.> pepper the engine to let the steam out, than strafe at you liesure. watch out> for the ammo cars!It really depends on the scale that you are working in and if you can work with something other than strictly injection molded plastic.When you allow 1/76 to fill some gaps (a slowly diminishing nich) and work in all mediums including cast resin and cast metal and do the occasional civilian car there are currently 5,380 kits and models to choose from. Biggest new nich is the built and painted cast metal models. Starting to see these stripped and repainted with added detail and replacement parts. Same with diecast and pre-built/painted plastic aircraft.Tom

ok, i'm busted, i love japanese girls.....

stuff used on the

it take to get

Amen to that - it's the same story with 1/72 aircraft. As Tom (maiesm72?) can probably attest, the Bf-109 must be the most-kitted aircraft in this scale by a huge margin (I think the Zero was once No.

1, but I suspect this may have changed. Regardless, Bf-109 =3D Zero =3D loser), while other, equally worthy types flown by the *winners* are ignored. How about the Yak-1b, or any Yak, for that matter? If it hadn't been for Dakoplast, many years ago, we would never have had a decent 1/72 Yak-9, but just try to find one now. And this is a "cottage-industry" kit, not a mainline manufacturer's product. Yak-7? Dakoplast again, and Valom, apparently using the Dakoplast masters. Likewise the La-5 series (don't say AML) and the I-153 (Heller did tackle this one, but kind of got it wrong in some significant ways). The Allison P-51 has been mentioned elsewhere in this thread - it took *decades* before Academy finally stepped up and gave us a reasonably- accurate, easy-to-build kit of this important and beautiful-looking aircraft in 1/72 (I wish they'd do the P-51A and A-36 now!). I admit that the Bf-109 had a complex and potentially interesting evolution, from the Bf-109V to the Bf/Me-109K, but puh-leeze!!! Enough, already!

John

PaPaPeng wrote: : : Japanese warships turn me off. Their superstructures look like the : hairpin accoutrements on a Geisha's wig. : It is rather a sweeping generalization to say that all of the IJN had the "Pagoda" superstructure that their earlier battleships had.

I am not a fan of the "Pagoda" superstructures, but that will not stop me from buying the Kongo when it comes out.

On the other hand, the Takao and her sisters look very sleek with the superstructure and raked aft funnel. Plus a lot of the IJN ships seemed to avoid the "clutter" that infected the USN ships as the Pacific war ground on, what with radar, comminications and, primarily, AA mounts and their directors.

Bruce

PaPaPeng wrote: : : German WWII Armor equipment look logical and functional. : Well, okay. Tiny box, small box, medium box and large box. (Pz II, III, IV and VI, respectively). : : Almost : streamlined. : Hmm, clearly not talking about the boxes, now. : : Allied equipment look as if the final product is a : compromise of many unrelated parts. : Hmmm, not sure what you mean. US armor shows a clear family history in the M2/M3/M5 light tanks and the M3/M4 medium tanks. It is not until the M24 and M26 that the mold is clearly broken, and even then, there is a clear "see how we evolved" pattern evident, with the M-18 serving as the link between the two sets of designs.

I think British tanks follow a very similiar pattern, in part of the artificial constrains placed on their design parameters. There things are a bit more confusing, primarily due, I believe, to who was selected to build the vehicle determining things like welded or riveted construction.

Given how completely useless the "Tank Board" was, it is no wonder British armor development seemed stuck in neutral for much of the war. However, they did realize there was a very hard fought war between armor and armament long before the US Army apparently stumbled into that awareness. : : The logical design of German equipment allows the real : thing to be easily upgraded or adapted for other war duties. : "Easily" is generally not a word used with German armor. Especially when it came to repair and or upgrades. There is a reason the Su-76i only used PzIIIJ chassis - it was the last Pz III variant that used a mechanical transmission. The Sovs could fix them. I don't believe anybody could fix the pre-selector servo shifted transmission fitted to later Pz III variants. Not even the Germans. So, as a result, what the "repair" depots generally recived was a stripped tank hull, the parts otherwise being kept by the front line maintenance units for spare parts. This meant that the rear depots were basically buulding new tanks, not refurbishing them like the US Army did. : : The Pz : III and IV chassis for example produced very good looking, meanacing : and effective assault gun versions. : Well, so long as you ignore the special wheels that had to be developed for those "sleek Pz IV panzerjeager" designs, which were a sure sign of an overloaded chassis. Even the assault gun version of the Pz IV needed special leading roadwheels, I believe...

Meanwhile, the M4 medium tank spawned a respectible amount of variants itself, and remained in front line service for another decade after the "uber" designs were gone and if still around, mainly served as museum or memorial pieces.

The British designs generally went the same way, but that was more due to the British actually (somehow) managing to come up with a design that was a very worthy successor to the rude beast that started the whole mess to begin with. :-) : : Somehow it would have been : impossible to do something similar with allied equipment. : And yet, despite these paragons of virtue showing their clear engineering superiority, NOBODY felt compelled to to move the factories that produced them home and start building them as their own designs (ahem). Not even those guys that were notorious for doing exactly that. Shocking, I tell you, SHOCKING!

Bruce

you could probably spend 10 years just building the aces-marked 109 kits.

love that upside down y shaped funnels some of the big ijn boats had. was that basicall a siamese of two funnels to save space? the kongo was an awesome monster.

Be a Mopar modeller and try not to build a half dozen 440s or Hemis. A little scrounging around can get you something a bit more typical under the hood. I do have a couple cars with Slant-6s and there is a

273 out there in the Little Red Wagon kit.

Bill Banaszak, MFE Sr.

Still hoping for some Twin-H Hudson power...

You could try doing a "backdate" and build "Kongo" as she left Vickers Barrow-in-Furness yard in 1912. A real beauty!

Fore Funnel? The other was a stubby tube, IIRC.

Cheers

Moramarth

Exactly - why build Panthers when you've got the Centurion in production?

Cheers,

Moramarth

I figure when they cut all the fighters loose, free to roam and attack targets of opportunity, that's just what the P-51 pilots did. A T-bolt pilot friend of mine told me that the Thud pilots learned to aim for strikes on the road just ahead of the target, the idea being to bounce the rounds upward thru the thinner undersides of their targets. He never made it out of the states by the time the war ended, so that tactic was passed from the ETO back to pilots training in the states. Mustang pilots may have picked up the same trick.

And forgive me the slight of the Typhoon. Corsairs and P-??s make me randy... yeah baby!

WmB

Having been inspired by this beauty

I can see your point. I *so* want to build one of those. Maybe after I've finished the two Eduard FW-190s that I received as birthday prezzies.

Oh... and after the Sea Vixen, of course.

snipped-for-privacy@realtime.net (Bruce Burden) wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@enews2.newsguy.com:

Not to overstate the obvious but they would have been better served had they more of the "clutter". I get the impression that Japanese developement became quite restrained after the war started. With little manufacturing capacity (as opposed to the US) there would seem little point. How many ships did they even launch after the war started? How many were significantly modernized like older US BBs. If you look at the deaths of Muashi and Yamato, replace them with equivalent US ships, Iowas, thier escorts with US AA cruisers, etc and replace the US aircraft with the contemparaneous Japanese equivalents. I would suggest that far fewer would have made it through to launch thier weapons, torpedo or bombs and those that did would have been less likely to strike home because of the intense AA. Not because the pilots would have been any less courageous or skilled (well by that part of the war thier skills would have been much less well developd).

It always strikes me as odd that the IJN didn't put more into AA defense as the war went on, considering thier experiences unless it truly was a resource problem.

Frank

But they did! Even Yamato and Musashi traded a brace of triple 6.1" mounts for more 5"DP, Maya replaced her damaged twin 8" "C" turret with a couple of twin 5" DP, and many destroyers sacrificed a main battery mount to provide the topweight for more light AA - all in all, not to dissimilar to what the RN was doing. The problem for the Japanese was their light AA was a rather anemic 25mm job, they didn't (IIRC) ever upgrade to anything like the 40mm Bofors.

Regards,

Moramarth

think of how they threw away a modern, really great submarine force. merchant ships just weren't fitting to the bushido spirit. bushido has the same definition as macho, they both mean stupid.

and they sure didn't have proximity fuses.