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P-51D is no intercepter ?


Blech

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The mustang is primarily a high altitude long-range bomber escort. That is what it was designed to do and I don't believe it was ever used as an interceptor since the Americans didn't have to defend themselves from large groups of enemy bombers.

 

Of course, that is what I think, I am not sure if I am right.

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the spitfire is an interceptor, they forgo armor and fuel capacity for firepower, airspeed and manuverability...

 

the Allison P-51 was originally a ground attack plane, but after they upgraded the engine to the Merlin, they realized it could be used for long range escort, it's heavy and not the most manuverable(see laminar flow wing), but compared to what the germans had, especially pilot wise, by the time the definitive P-51D came out, it was more than adequate.

 

i think the P-51 gets too much attention, the P-47 had a much bigger role in ww2.

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Yep, "P" for Pursuit and "D" for the dome (canopy).

 

D has nothing to do with 'Dome', it's a direct continuation of P-51 B and C series. Right after D version H and K came out. But yes, P stands for pursuit.

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Bodie said that the P for "pursuit" (changed to F for "fighter" after the end of WWII) was something that the USAAF used to circumvent a boneheaded WWI-era Army regulation requiring fighters to have no more than, I think, 200 lb. of armament. This is why the USN never used the P- designation; everyone knew that the P meant "fighter" (not interceptor), and unhampered by the idiotic regulation, the Navy simply called them what they were: fighters.

 

Once the USAAF became its own thing, separate from the Army and no longer subject to it, the USAF dropped the P thing and started using the F as well.


Edited by Echo38
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Still P-51 can be a good interceptor with quite nice ROC and decent firepower it could definitely be able to take on Ju88 and He111. And its longer range combined with early warning tech (radar) would be able to intercept the bombers long before they were even close to their target.

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P-51 can hardly be called a fighter..

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P-51 can hardly be called a fighter..

 

What? A fighter needs speed and maneuverability, and the P-51 had plenty of both. Arguably, it had slightly less overall maneuverability than the 109, but if that makes the P-51 not a fighter, then neither were the FW 190, P-38, P-47, and a bunch of other high-speed fighters, all of which were intended to be fighters and were successful in that role.

 

If you refuse to call a fighter a fighter unless it's superb at "knife-fighting" combat, then only a small number of the chief fighters of the war would be considered fighters. Namely, the Spitfire, the 109, and the Japanese fighters such as the Zero and Oscar.


Edited by Echo38
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Hey, it doesn't have radar, nor can you select afterburner so I guess it's for sure out lol.....

 

The Mustang was designed as a fighter, so it's a fighter. As much as I personally bag on the Pony it really was a great aircraft and did it's job as good as any in WWII. Zero could turn tighter, FW-190 could roll faster, the P-40 could outdive it....well hell, it could outdive a submarine lol.....point is even though Mustang lacked in some aspects she dominated in others.

 

Every fighter has it's weaknesses and strengths. There is no "perfect" fighter.

 

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Dont forget the "Pilot Factor".

The good thing, especially with Plnes in this timeframe, is that the Pilot makes a plane a good Fighter or a bad Fighter (or any other role you can think of).

 

Lets say the 109 is far superior against the P-51, if the 109 pilot is a rookie and the p-51 pilot is good, then this technical fact doesnt count.

 

Especially in this WWII timeframe the pilot factor is extremely important and in most discussions not a topic just because of technical chit chat.

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We aren't forgetting the pilot factor. With flight sim-games, far more virtual fighter pilots become virtual aces than real fighter pilots became real aces, because if we screw up and "die" (or get unlucky and "die"), we respawn and keep learning. They didn't have that luxury.

 

In the virtual sky, then, there are far more experts than IRL. For this reason, any given ace's chances of meeting another ace who has likewise more or less mastered his ship are rather high (unlike IRL, where those chances were rather low). For this reason, the question of how the two fighters compare with pilot skill not being a significant factor is an especially important one in flight sim-games, where things like duels between approximately equal pilots are much more commonplace than they were in the real war.

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I think you guys are either going somewhat off topic, or overthinking the OP's issue :D. I guess whoever in ED was putting the Mustang into the mission editor aircraft categories back in 2012 didn't get THAT deep into the history of that plane, which at that point was supposed to be a one-off bonus module, almost made just for laughs.

 

Not the first and not the last simplification/leftover from those times. One can wonder, though if the "interceptor" thing is going to be altered with advertized Mustang ETO overhaul, whatever it is and whenever it comes.

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