Word: messerschmitts
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...North Africa, P-38s destroyed 20 Italian troop transports, three other planes, eleven tanks in a couple of days. Against Germany's Messerschmitt 109-G and the Focke-Wulf 190, the P-38s had scored "about even," which prompted Air Forces Lieut. General Henry H. Arnold to predict: "If we can continue to destroy the Germans plane for plane, the result cannot long be in doubt because our production is at least double the German production...
Back to Back. Major General Jimmy Doolittle's 12th Air Force probably had enough planes to provide support in the air. From North Africa came reports of P-38 Lightnings meeting and beating Focke-Wulf 1905 and Messerschmitt 109Gs in their first major combat test. The difficulty was the lack of airdromes near enough to the front. The small French bases that were available were not equipped. Oil, gas and equipment for servicing had to be laboriously moved up. The difficulty was supply...
When Major General Carl Spaatz asked Sergeant Gilger how he disposed of a Messerschmitt during a recent raid, the sergeant cropped his answer as closely as he crops his hair. "I shot him down," he said...
When Luftwaffe pilots first met the Fortresses, they had a brutal shock. Used to sitting beyond the short range of .30-caliber guns and potting British bombers with their light aircraft cannon, Messerschmitt and Fw-190 pilots found themselves in heavy fire as they approached the U.S. bombers. For a while U.S. commanders had trouble persuading their gunners to fire when the Germans were many hundreds of yards away: the gunners, unused to their high-velocity, long-range weapons, had been trained to wait too long. But they soon learned better, and Fortresses knocked down at least 48 German fighters...
...Appraisal of our older fighter types-the Bell P39 and the Curtiss P-40-compels the conclusion that they are not right for operation under today's high-altitude tactics in Britain. Both are outclassed in the high-altitude field by the British Spitfire and the German Messerschmitt 109 and Focke-Wulf 190. But it is one of the paradoxes of aircraft performance that the P39 has proved a splendid weapon on the Russian and Aleutian fronts [where lower altitudes are the rule] and that the P-40 is a first-line fighter in Egypt...