Bf-109 Kill Count
Images are sometimes not shown due to bandwidth/network limitations. Refreshing the page usually helps.
You are currently reading a thread in /k/ - Weapons
You are currently reading a thread in /k/ - Weapons
Where could a guy find the cumulative kill count for the BF-109 including all users? Considering how widely the '109 was used one would think it took down a large number of aircraft.
>>29714787
They were indeed the 2nd most destroyed aircraft in the history of aviation.
I have a book on LW aces - there were more than 100 LW aces who achieved 100 or more kills so that is at least 10000 Aerial Victories alone - I think the real figure is 13,000 or 14,000 thats is for only 100 pilots....
The 109 would have had over 20000 kills easily. In 1941 to the start of 1942 the Red Army Air Force lost 20000 planes alone to all causes. Many through ground attack but there were thousands air to air.
>>29714787
Galland hood 109s are pure sex.
>, Hartmann was falsely charged with war crimes, specifically the "deliberate shooting of 780 Soviet civilians" in the village of Briansk, attacking a "bread factory" on 23 May 1943, and destroying 345 "expensive" Soviet aircraft.
>bread factory
>'expensive' aircraft
k
e
k
>>29715827
Those LW aces probably claimed the same 1000 kills.
Well you've got units like JG 52 alone credited with upwards of 10,000 kills, so that should give you an idea of the scale you're looking at.
However, you should be wary of actual kills vs what units are credited with. II./JG 52, for example, claimed 1,000 aircraft in their last month in the Crimea with just 16 fighters, while total Soviet admitted losses over the course of the 5 month campaign are less than 200.
>>29715661
Yes, that happens when you're the #1 most produced fighter in history and lose a bombing war where your country's fuel supply is destroyed.
The 109 is on par with anything the west had, but not when fuel is highly rationed so it often is at a height disadvantage since the airfield doesn't have spare fuel for them to loiter at combat altitude.
If you think in a reverse situation, p51 mustang stuck climbing from 0 altitude while 109s arrived in the area at 6-8km up would not have been a slaughter of the mustangs then you don't know a fucking thing about airplanes.
And even though they lost the war, the #1 most destroyed aircraft was Russian. And the main reason western individual plane loss numbers look deceptively low is they split it between different models.
Germany just used different models of bf109 and fw190 mainly, whereas US had the P40, P47, P51, F4U, P38, F6F, B17 and several other planes to split deaths between.
Add every british Hurricane, Spitfire, Wellington, Lancaster, Beaufighter/Mosquito airmen who also were fighting "BF109s" (because germany used variants from the start of the war to the end) and it would be possible for the 109 to be the most-destroyed aircraft even if every single BF109 built destroyed 4 various enemy aircraft.
>>29716814
Senpai the 109s with the 603 and 605s had less horsepower than the later model Merlins, let alone the Griffons
>>29717625
the airwarr was long lost when griffons appeared in significant numbers, but 109s still had a great climb rate and good enough manueverability. What fucked them up the most was shitty manufacturing at the end of the war and lack of fuel and pilot training. 190s were still feared too but thats a differnt topic.
>>29716814
The BF-109 was not on par late war.
Germany lost more resources and the result of that was west able to build better air frames and put superchargers in their aircraft that allowed their planes to fly higher and performer better. At those altitudes the BF-109 suffered.
It was a fantastic aircraft, but Germany could not keep up with in terms of producing more aircraft and upgrading their aircraft at the same time.
>>29714787
Considering how often you see pilots inflating their kill counts, good luck finding any kind of accurate number.
The Bf109's climb and dive abilities were on par to everything else or even better (P-51) at the end of the war.
Looking at the operational history the Bf109 was the best aircraft of her time.
>>29716807
You should maybe stop reading Soviet nonsense.
The Luftwaffe had the most accurate kill claims in WWII. It helped that even Göring couldn't believe the incredible claims of the Luftwaffe and was pretty autistic about checking the claims.
>>29717625
>>29717743
Real problem was that the Germans simply did not have the resources for high octane fuel.
Nobody can stay on top when your fuel is worse by default, besides the fact that Merlins and Griffons were marvels.
But fuel was the main reason why Germany was so desperate for jet engines, jets run on everything that combusts. Piston engines not so much.
Jets are also mechanically a lot simpler than pistons which is a big advantage once you need an engine above 400 HP.
They also wanted to outfit Panthers with turbines.
And I think there were plans for a FW190 turboprop.
>>29718415
109 is funny because it was designed initially as a very light fighter, never for big 603s. But it worked and it climbed well because it was a tiny plane with a big azz engine.
The Panzer IV was also designed as a light tank with shitty leaf spring suspension.
So the later variants were too nose heavy and couldn't take the weight.
The Panzer 3 with torsion bar took the same amount of weight much better than the IV but suffered from the fact that the turret ring couldn't take a long 7.5.
The 3 was actually a more modern design than the 4
>>29719324
This, German kill counts are way inflated.
>>29719342
>dive
Not so much, the P-51 performs clearly better at higher speeds/dives.
Controls that stiffen at high speeds. P-51/47 and 190s suffered much less from that.
P-51 was an escort fighter with not the strongest engine.
Aerodynamically very clean which gave it a great top speed, but the engine wasn't too powerful.
Not too surprising that a lighter plane with a slightly more powerful engine (depends on version though) outclimbs a heavier P-51.
>>29719349
No
Best (prop) plane of the war would have obviously been a double prop 3000 HP Griffon powered P-51.
>>29719507
>Not so much, the P-51 performs clearly better at higher speeds/dives.
Quite the opposite.
The P-51 was uncontrollable at high dive speeds.
>>29719565
I've never heard that before.
Any examples?
>>29719584
The P-51 had way lower critical mach number than the Bf-109 in the same timeframe.
"My flight chased 12 109s south of Vienna. They climbed and we followed,
unable to close on them. At 38,000 feet I fired a long burst at one of
them from at least a 1000 yards, and saw some strikes. It rolled over
and dived and I followed but soon reached compressibility with severe
buffeting of the tail and loss of elevator control. I slowed my plane
and regained control, but the 109 got away.
On two other occasions ME 109s got away from me because the P 51d could
not stay with them in a high-speed dive. At 525-550 mph the plane would
start to porpoise uncontrollably and had to be slowed to regain control.
The P 51 was redlined at 505 mph, meaning that this speed should not be
exceeded. But when chasing 109s or 190s in a dive from 25-26,000 it
often was exceeded, if you wanted to keep up with those enemy planes.
The P 51b, and c, could stay with those planes in a dive. The P 51d had
a thicker wing and a bubble canopy which changed the airflow and brought
on compressibility at lower speeds."
- Robert C.Curtis, American P-51 pilot.
>>29716814
Did you just count B17, Wellington, and Lancaster as fighters?
>>29719790
Not using B-17 bombers as air superiorty fighter
>bashing on the German claim system, which was one of the more reliable claim systems there was
>not bashing on American claims
>>29719880
>German claim system
>reliable
First you need to start distinguishing between what the Germans said and what the Germans did.
>>29719790
fun-fact: the Americans tried up-arming and up-armoring B-17's and B-24's to act as escort gunships. No bomb-load, just a metric shit-ton of 50 cals and ammo.
>>29719882
>I have no arguments
>>29719900
>make an unsupported claim
>suddenly have an argument as strong as the dumb shitposter's 'argument'
>>29719880
>>29719882
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_and_overclaiming_of_aerial_victories_during_World_War_II
>>29719893
> Americans tried
You mean did.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_666
Shit's better than the expendables.
>couldn't get a plane due to reputation
>finds cannabalized junk yard plane
>tows it out and repairs it to flying condition
>.30cals? Fuck those, .50cals for everyone
>single gun waste guns? Fuck that Twin Mount's baby
>I want my own pilot .50cal
>I want spare .50cals to fly with so if one jams or overheats we just throw the fucker over the side and plop on a new one
Shit was literally a flying fortress.
>>29719915
How did I know you were going to link this shitty wiki, that even says Germans didn't ever follow their own procedure.
>In practice, however, even in the early stages of the war, overclaiming by the Luftwaffe occurred. As the war entered its final, chaotic phase in 1945, many German aces' claims from late 1944 onward were left unvalidated due to the breakdown in administration within the Luftwaffe,[4] and at times bore little relationship to reality.
>>29719921
well, i ment "tried" as in "they did, but it never worked out so we stopped"-tried
>>29719909
Claiming that German kill claims are wrong and bloated while providing nothing is pretty much
>I have no arguments
>>29719990
Claiming that German kill claims are accurate while providing link to a wiki page that says German kill claims were inaccurate is pretty much
>I have less than no arguments
>German claims
It's an issue with semantics. Germans counted a kill if the enemy aircraft was incapacitated and another pilot verified it, while, for example, Soviets required a DOWNED aircraft with examined wreckage along with other pilots' accounts.
So really all the kill-count debate comes down to
>- You kills are not kills!
>- No, YOUR kills are not kills!
At this point, getting an objective and believable count for any widely-used fighter is literally impossible.
>>29715827
the LW shot down some 1000 I-16s within the first 48 hours of Barbarossa, I wouldn't be surprised if the number is higher.
>>29720358
>the LW shot down some 1000 I-16s within the first 48 hours of Barbarossa
Nnnnnnno. VVS LOST about a 1000 I-16 in the first 48 hours of Barbarossa, but most of those were captured by advancing Wehrmacht/destroyed by retreating Reds/bombed right on their fields, not shot down in the air. There simply wasn't nearly enough air combat for that.
>>29720358
pretty sure 99% of those were destroyed on the ground
>>29719349
>The Luftwaffe had the most accurate kill claims in WWII
If anything, they probably had the least accurate claims, especially later in the war. The only time you can 100% believe their claims without questioning is with the first couple days of Barbarossa where they could literally count every single wreck.
The claims the top aces were credited with are nothing short of ridiculous. III./JG 52 claimed more aircraft over the Kuban than the Soviets had ever sent to the theater, and the combined claims of II and III./JG 52 and II./SG 2 over the Crimea amount to something like 2 or 3 times what the Soviets had committed there with their three air armies participating in the campaign.
Hell, just look at the actual kills credited to pilots like Hartmann, Rall, and Barkhorn. Barkhorn's credited with 50 aircraft in a single day once the Soviets pushed across Perekop. You'd have to be retarded to think the kills the Luftwaffe are credited with later in the war are anything close to reality.
You know something's fucked when Soviet records are the more believable account of the story.
>>29720592
>Hell, just look at the actual kills credited to pilots like Hartmann, Rall, and Barkhorn. Barkhorn's credited with 50 aircraft in a single day once the Soviets pushed across Perekop.
Stop claiming such nonsense.
>>29720784
From Where the Iron Crosses Grow by Robert Forczyk
>In November and December 1943, Barkhorn personally claimed 51 enemy aircraft shot down and II./JG 52 inflicted over 200 losses on the VVS in exchange for 17 Bf-109s lost
Looks like I misquoted the "in a single day" part. Still, the point stands that the Germans were massively over-reporting to the point that they're claiming more aircraft in a single month than the Soviets lost in the entire campaign.
>>29719880
>A FUCKING HORSE
>>29715661
Which one is first?
>>29720871
>Still, the point stands that the Germans were massively over-reporting
Everyone did that. It was a general problem in WW2.
It's kinda obvious that this can easily happen in the heat of battle and even with gun camera footage you can't be 100% sure in all cases.
US bomber gunners probably claimed the whole Luftwaffe every few weeks.
>>29721482
Yeah generally the trend seems to be that the more stressed crews are (from things like high sortie rates, constant threat of attack, low morale), the less reliable their claims are. You had something similar with the Flying Tigers, where they're credited with more enemy aircraft than were ever committed to the theater.
The problem isn't so much that the Germans over-reported, but that people take their claims as fact. Everyone overreported, but you don't see people seriously spouting claims as to how supremely effective American bomber gunners were, or to how great the pilots of the Flying Tigers must have been, because in most cases people at least take the basic step of checking the records of both sides to see if the dubious claims are anywhere close to reality. For whatever reason, however, people just assume that all those absurd claims made by the Luftwaffe's Experten (especially later in the war) are 100% fact, just blowing off any evidence to the contrary as "Soviet propaganda."
>>29722043
^What he said.
>people refer to Dimitri Khazanov
Though still missing any evidence outside of that baseless claim.
>>29719915
>Alas - the article was started by someone with a big point to prove (basically, so far as I can gather, that our "air aces" article was unkind to the Luftwaffe). As edited - the article proves nothing of the kind - in fact the generalisations of the air aces article are pretty well bourne out. Personally I fear this article was born of a (probably quite well-meant and sincere) misconception by someone who "goes" for the Luftwaffe rather like some little boys go for a particular football team. All it "proves" in its present form is that everyone overclaimed (which the air aces article always said anyway). The dictatorships of the WWII period (Hitler, Mussolini AND Stalin) were haunted (like all such regimes) by a paranoid terror of sudden overthrow, and one of the ways they tried to counter this was a rigid control of information, to the extent that they eventually tended to believe their own propaganda (a good description of this process can be found in Adolf Galland's book, The first and the last - if one of the top German aces can be counted as reliable, even by the "Luftwaffe Luftwaffe ray ray ray" brigade). We "trust" German, Russian, and Italian loss records here (really, to do anything else would be pure speculation!) but it must be bourne in mind that they were quite often optimistic, and that their definition of a "loss" was also quite elastic. So sometimes the overclaiming of the British and U.S. (not to mention the Germans, at least when they fighting the Russians) may be at a little less dramatic than it sometimes seems from the raw numbers. All in all NOT a good article, and in my view a totally unnecessary one anyway. To salvage it you'd need to add details, not only of the "rules" if any of other countries, but also stats from other wars. All comparing chalk and cheese anyway in my view, and a total waste of time, even from the aviation enthusiasts' viewpoint.
nails it
80-90% confirmed is also quite accurate.
>>29715827
yellow nosed Bfs are so cute
>>29722396
Who the fuck are you quoting?
>>29720928
Something Soviet
>>29722725
He's quoting the talk page of that wikipedia article.
>>29719952
The only issue they had was that once the rest of the bomber fleet dropped their loads then they were much slower than them and lagged behind on the way back. The P-51D elemenated the need for them, so the idea was abandoned.
>>29719990
Allied kill counts don't even come close to German claims, for one.
Another point it that for the Americans you had to have a "confirmed kill" for it to count, meaning you had a gun camera that could say whether or not you were bullshitting.
>>29722788
>America
>reliable
>no source
Planes
>>29722733
>>29720928
Il-2. Which is also the single most produced military aircraft in history.
>>29716708
The vast majority never served alongside each other.
You can argue about over-claiming of kills all day, but it happened everywhere on all sides and often wasn't that ridiculous.
>>29723352
> and often wasn't that ridiculous.
But generally speaking, it was. Look at the Japanese claims of hits in various battles. Or the number of tank kills claimed by aircraft, in particular Typhoon pilots.
>>29720784
This
The most kills in a day was 18 done by Emil Lang in a Focke Wulf.
>>29723405
I'm not that familiar with the pacific.
That said, air-to-ground is a much different thing than air-to-air in those terms. Is it extremely difficult to assess the effect you've actually had short of a turret sailing past you.
>>29724153
When you claim to have hit and sunk dozens of ships and haven't so much as damaged a single one, something's up.
>>29724206
Dont best korea have an exibit dedicated to the sinking of a US cruiser during the war that a) never sunk and b) was only deployed to the Atlantic Fleet?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFUKtA9lPSs
>>29723267
And were flown in formation B-17 style, kek.
>>29716605
flour is of causing explosion. not weapon factory tovarisch I swear
>>29722811
Yes the US navy started mounting gun cameras to confirm kills.
