What were the best Axis/Allied fighter planes in World War II? Best armour?

Question

I'm generally a pacifist, but love military history, particularly World War II. My shelf is stocked (or was) with plastic models of 1/48, 1/72, and 1/35 tanks and planes from that conflict.

Answer 1

American Naval: From the standpoint of overall performance, the F6F Hellcat. It could both out run and out turn the Zero. From the standpoint of kill ratios, the F4U Corsair was best.

American Land: P-51D Mustang.

American Armor: M-26 Pershing, although it never saw any action.

Soviet: Il-2 Sturmovik. This plane's claim to fame was that it was built extremely tough and was difficult to shoot down.

Soviet Armor: T-34/85

British: Late model Spitfires.

Japanese: Mitsubishi A6M Zero and it's land based equivalent, the "Oscar".

German air: FW-190 Dora, and it's varient the TA-152. While the ME 262 was/is pretty obvious, it came long too late to make much difference. Also it was misused... Georing deployed these aircraft as high speed bombers when they really should have been used as interceptors.

German Armor: I vote the Panther tank.

Answer 2

Best overall was the P-51
The Corsair was also excellent and stayed in production well after the start of the jet age.
The P-47 wasn't the greatest fighter was could take the most damage.
Me262 was the first fully operational jet fighter,and while unstoppable at speed,was slow and vulnerable during take offs and landings.It had an unreliable engine (due to low quality materials) and was not very maneuverable.
The Me163 was the fastest,with rocket power,but had a very short range (8 minutes maximum power) and tended to blow up on landing.It achieved little.
The Spitfire and Me109 were good and have a lot of fans as well.
Almost any of these planes were deadly at the hands of a skilled pilot.
As far as armor,The Porsche Maus was so big and heavily armored it could barely move,and would have been vulnerable,but was still impressive for being so huge.
The Russian T-34 was probably the best tank overall during the war.

Answer 3

Everyone loves the p-51 Mustang (including me), but the British spitfire saved the British from Germany.Lightweight, powerful,and the best hydraulics of its time.

Pacific theater planes- The Japanese were killing allied aircraft with the Mitsubishi built Zero. It could outmaneuver anything in the sky in the pacific.The allied answer to the problem was the horsepower-laden F4 Corsair which appeared late in the war.

As for armor;nothing could touch the invinciblity of the German Tiger tank.The turret was 5-6 in thick in a single forging,opposed to the allied armor of 2.5 in sectional. This gave the tiger incredible weight and bogged it down in anything less than road-grade soil.It also reduced the fighting range of the tank via poor fuel economy.

sorry if this sounds like a history lesson, but it is interesting to see how they all evolved.

It would have been interesting to see how the spitfire would have performed against the zero had history been different.. True bragging rights wouldv'e gone to the surviving pilots.

Answer 4

Fighters:
Allied: Supermarine Spitfire, P-47 Thunderbolt aka "The Jug",P-38 Lightning, P-51 Mustang
Carrier-based aircraft: F6F Hellcat, Corsair(WW2 fighter,not the Corsair 2 jet)
Bombers: B-17 Flying Fortress, B-24 Liberator, B-25 Mitchell, Avro Lancaster

Axis fighters: Messerschmidt Me109, Mitsubishi Zero....I would say the Messerschmidt ME-262 jet fighter but it came too late in the war to really make a difference(same with the RAF's Meteor fighter jet), but it was the inspiration for US and Soviet fighters that came out in the 1950's.

Answer 5

The P-38 Lightening,P-51 Mustang

Answer 6

The German ME-262 was the best fighter, but it entered the fray too late to do any real damage. It was a good 100 mph faster then anything flying at the time and once it got off the ground and up to speed/altitude, nothing could touch it. And as to the best armor, it was once again the Germans. The Tiger tank could take out anything we had.

Answer 7

Allied was the Lockheed P-38 Axis was the German Messerschmidt

Answer 8

the Cosair was good as was the p-40, the B-17
and the B-24