Can we have a thread about WW2 economy?

yup

I agree with your narrative but please don't post unsourced images

USA did nothing it was all the russi-

On the topic of fighters, were American fighters any good?

I've always been under the impression that British and German fighters were the best, and reading into some of what the Yanks had it's difficult to sort out which were rubbish and which were quality.

All memes aside the Corsair, Hellcat, P-51 and P-47 were excellent aircraft. The Bf-109 and Fw-190 were probably among the best in the world when they were introduced but were totally obsolete by the end of the war. It sounds a bit silly considering we're still operating airframes that are decades old these days like the F-16, but the pace of technological development was insane during WWII.

The Bell Air Cobra was rejected as unfit for combat by the RAF and the USAAF, but was supplied to the USSR under Lend-Lease. It was in fact numerically the most common type of aircraft supplied.

The biggest problem the Germans had was supplying their air force with high-quality tetra-ethyl leaded aviation gas. This may be the most common reason for poor performance of German aircraft after 1942.

When it comes to Lend Lease and air craft, American aluminum was one of the most important resources delivered to the USSR in the war. I recall reading an interview with Russian historian Oleg Budnitsky where he claimed that more than half of Soviet aircraft were produced using aluminum provided by the US. I hate to derail this thread into another muh lend lease xD thread, but that's really where the program shined the most. Supplementing resources so the USSR could focus on direct war time production.

To stay on topic a bit more I have a question. Was Albert Speer a meme? Or did he really have as big an impact on German engineering/production systems as some claim?

The P-51 and P-47 were both amazing pieces of aircraft. The P-47 especially was held in insanely high regard by the pilots for its safety and reliability.
I remember them being described in regard that the P-51 is the cool car you pick up chicks in, while the P-47 is the car you buy when you're 30 and have your first kid.

Overall, even other American aircraft was pretty good and has insanely good statistics backing it up. I literally cannot think of a contender from a different country to any of theirs in its respective category.
They don't have the most iconic ones of the war (maybe aside from bombers) but that shouldn't diminish their actual quality.

I totally forgot about my main point in regards to American aircraft which was meant to be similar to anything regarding American production during the war.
They had the best technology. They had enough resources, they had the safe environment, they had enough time and a functioning system that coordinated the production itself (see for more, he's right). They had basically everything you could ask for from a country that should do well in a war and they used it correctly.

Of course, their planes were good. Everything else was too. Or at least, it was never awful or whatever.

Czech here, by the way, so very little bias towards the Americans.

The main reason for that, and the Soviet high appraisals of the AirCobra and the King Cobra was that it was slow at high altitudes; and most of the bombing doctrine of the RAF and USAAF was around not being "flying artillery", and high altitude strategic bombing, which a low altitude fighter is pretty useless at defending.

The Soviets, on the other hand, thought htat low altitude aviation was key, and were quite happy with the planes.

>To stay on topic a bit more I have a question. Was Albert Speer a meme? Or did he really have as big an impact on German engineering/production systems as some claim?
He was mostly a meme, at least according to Tooze, which is the only book I've really read on that subject. He was good at motivating sluggish industries and replacing people who were underperforming, but most of his 'production miracles' were simply re-allocating steel budgets (which was usually the bottleneck in the German weapons production system) from point A to point B for a bit, hailing it as a success of German industry, and then quietly moving it back to whatever the next thing that needed propping up.

>spend half your budget on strategic bombing
>70% of heavy bombers are shot down
>they are lucky if their bombs hit within 1 mile of a target

>German economy didn't militarize until 1944
Hate how pervasive this meme is. They were more mobilized than Britain throughout the entire war. In terms of military spending as a percentage of GDP, it was consistently higher than any other power from 1939-44.

Both Cobras were slow at all altitudes and sluggish response to the controls. the Russians were not happy with them, they were what they had and replaced them as quickly as possible. No Russian made fighter incorporated any of their features.

joebaugher.com/usaf_fighters/p39_19.html

scout.com/military/warrior/Article/P-39-Airacobra-Americas-Worst-WWII-Fighter-Was-the-Star-of-Russi-106937163

You will find their effectiveness fell off rapidly, say three months. after introduction as the Germans learned their weaknesses.

They were used, and used successfully up until the very end of the war. Alexander Pokryshin first flew a P-39 in 1943, and got more kills with those than any other plane he flew. You're talking out of your ass.

Assuming you believe Russian kill records. Pity he 'forgot' to turn on his gun cameras so often. German records of losses do not support his claims.

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This

Why should the P-39 kill counts be any more or less accurate than the other kill counts with the other plane? What exactly is the benefit of faking up a pilot's success and not attributing it to one of your own designs but rather to a "shitty" American one?

You still, by the way, have not given anything whatsoever to demonstrate that "their effectiveness fell off rapidly" as per your claim here

Why was the Bf-109 so fucking A E S T H E T I C?

I think the Americans and Brits had the best looking and best functioning planes of the war.

>the Russians were not happy with them
What the hell are you on about? They were one of the few pieces of Lend-Lease equipment the Soviets were willing to openly praise. They were far from perfect, but the Soviets loved them enough that they were constantly giving input to Bell engineers for updated variants.

>No Russian made fighter incorporated any of their features
Except that's wrong, you fucking retard. Plenty of pilots transitioning over from I-16s found the P-39's odd center of gravity made it handle similarly to the I-16, making transitional training easier. And the nose-mounted guns were something nearly all Soviet fighters had, so again, it was easy to transition to the type.

>whining about innacurate kill counts
Everyone lied about kill counts - it's not exclusive to P-39 pilots. And why would the Soviets want to bolster the reputation of a foreign design over their own indigenous aircraft?

>Russians were not happy with them
What? Fucking neck yourself
>Concerning armament, 'I personally heard from Aleksandr Ivanovich Pokryshkin', writes General I. P. Lebedev, 'his high evaluation of the combat quality of the Aircobra. He reminisced that volleys of fire from this aircraft frequently "tore to shreds" German aircraft.' And pilot Fedor Andreyevich Zhelvakov remembered that during the fighting on the Voronezh Front in 1942, only the Aircobra could contend with the German fighters.
>And if we add that the Aircobra also had an outstanding gyroscope and automatic radio compass, it becomes clear that flights in bad weather and at night became possible for us only through the experience of working with lend-lease aircraft.
>From information gathered from interrogations of shot-down German pilots from II and II/JG 5 (A. Jakobi, H. Bodo, K. Philipp, and W. Schumacher), it was learned that they considered the Tomahawk to be a serious enemy (they placed only the Bf-109F and the Airacobra above it). The relatively limited success of Soviet pilots was due primarily to their adherence to defensive tactics and insufficiently decisive attacks.

Valeriy Romanenko (2009) The P-40 in Soviet Aviation, The Journal of Slavic
Military Studies, 22:1, 97-124
Stanislav Gribanov (1998) Te role of us lend‐lease aircraft in
Russia in World War II, The Journal of Slavic Military Studies, 11:1, 96-115,

I'm not even sure it's lying; lying implies a deliberate intent to deceive. You're zooming along at 400+kph and blazing away at anything you see, you come out of the cloud of fire, and you go "Hey, there were X enemy fighters, and now I don't see any, so between us, we probably got most of them", and leave it at that.