Essential and Dispensible WW2 aircraft.

On Wed, 03 Oct 2007 04:44:52 -0700, Eunometic
wrote:

On Oct 3, 7:41 am, "Keith Willshaw"
wrote:
"Eunometic" wrote in message

ps.com...



Essential and Dispensible WW2 aircraft.
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I've created a list of aircraft of WW2 that were essential to that
side and also others that were dispensible in the sense that their
place could easily have been taken by other aircraft or that were so
ineffective that they were not needed at all.

A great deal of effort was spent on aircraft that did not perform and
were 'war loosers' while there was also a great deal of duplication of
effort on aircraft that added nothing special and detracted from gains
in production.

United Kingdom

Essential:
Hurricane; had to be avialable in numbers for battle of britain
Spitfire; had to provide quality fighter throughout the war an
amenable to all rolls.
Mosquito; night bomber, night fighter, fast day bomber and most
importanty reconaisance aircraft par excellance.
Lancaster; easy to fly, devastating war load.
Wellington: Britains Medium bomber and an important coastal command
aircraft.

Non Essential:
Beaufighter; not a useless aircraft as it could take damage but its
roll could have been taken by others. It kept bristol busy.

I strongly disagree. It played an essential role both as a nightfighter and
in the shipping strike role in the ETO and their long range made
them extremely valuable ground attack aircraft in the far east

It's contemporary the the Mosquito could also do that job, and much
better at that.
What I don't like about it was that if confronted by german airforce
day fighters it was
in deep trouble. It needed an escort; whereas the mosquito coastal
command aircraft actualy took on Fw 190.
If given a choice of choosing between 1000 extra Mosquito vs 1000 less
beaufighter?

Beaufighter in service date Oct. '40, Mosquito in-service date
almost exactly a year later. The Mosquito used merlin engines, a
crucial supply item until some time in '43


Peter Skelton