Which was the best aircraft in WWII

There were many types of aircraft used in WWII, What in your opinion was the best?
I like the Me262

Avro Lancaster

or Bf109

Originally posted by Metdude711
Avro Lancaster

or Bf109

Why Bf109? Didn't they lost to the Spitfires and US planes?

In my opinion it's B-29 bombers. They were almost invulnerable.

P-38j Lightning...............

Bf-109 K-4, P-51, Ilyushin Il-2 dayum it's hard to choose cuz they're all so smoooth...

It just has to be the British Supermarine Spitfire



[edit on 12/6/04 by Hyperen]

Just think how awesome a 262 with British engines would have been in 1946, that would have shown the Meteor a clean pair of heels!

The 'best' is very difficult though but I think that the best pane under development at that time wasn't even German. The Miles M.52 was under construction and was the only supersonic plane actually in manufacture when the war ended, Bell took much of the M.52 and built it into the x-1 when the British Govt wimped out, as usual.

www.aero51.plus.com...

[Edited on 4-6-2004 by waynos]

Is that the thing where different countries were trying to build the first piloted supersonic plane that wouldn't crash when it broke the sound barrier?

Because if it is I think the American government said to the British that they would offer help. They said tell us all you know about supersonic flight and we'll tell you all we know. The British told the Americans all they knew but never got a reply.

I'd have to say the Boeing B-17. It was a major workhorse, and although it was brought back damaged, it was more often than not brought back.

Yup! We were well sucked in by our helpful allies weren't we after we had given them jet technology and all

Whatsmore we fell for it again in the mid fifties when Boeing asked De Havilland to show them everything they'd got on their new DH 121 airliner, De Havilland were never allowed into Boeings plant in return though and lo and behold Boeing produced a DH121 clone called the 727!

Its not that we can't design great planes, we're often just too thick to build 'em!

Hyperen is right. The one, the only, the supermarine spitfire is the total 'daddy!!'

DC-3 / C-47 / Dakota / Li-2

it won the war.

Originally posted by Warhappy
There were many types of aircraft used in WWII, What in your opinion was the best?
I like the Me262

Wow; so many great planes and so many conflicting catagories. I take it fighters and bombers will do you? This is one for a 'top 5' I think (& all real flyers, none of those sketches 'on the back of a cigarette packet' woulda/coulda/shoulda jobs either!).

OK, my top 5 fighters are -

1) P 51D Mustang; 2) Spitfire, any version they're all beautiful; 3) Me 109F or K, wicked mean thing ; 4)Focke Wulf Ta 152 H, big, vicious and mean as f***; 5) Me 262, most advanced true fighter, 1st of the shark-like jets, MEAN in capitals!

My top 5 bombers are -

1) Avro Lancaster, mean SOB, carried most of the loads that beat 7 shades out of Adolf's gang; 2)B17g, how they did daylight for years at a time I can't imagine; 3) B29, range, a heavy load, technically advanced and a looker too; 4) Heinkel He 274, the most advanced prop-bomber of the lot in WW2, thank God the French made sure it never flew for the Germans in WW2; 5) Arado Ar234C, the most advance of the lot period, 4 jet bomber from the chaos that Germany was then, incredible.

Originally posted by Warhappy
There were many types of aircraft used in WWII, What in your opinion was the best?
I like the Me262

....and, of course, as is the way of us westerners I've competely missed out a single Russian airplane.

Completely unfair and ignoring the fact that it was them ones that actually 'won' the most of the war against Germany (in the main).

I rate their Lavochkin La 9/11 & their Yakovlev Yak 7/9 fighters and their Ilyushin Il2 and Petlyakov Pe 2 bombers. I like the way the russians did things. Sturdy, cheap and completely fitted for the job required....then make millions of them! So I guess that's a top 7 then! lol.

maybe a top 8 (I agree generally with your others) as even the Spitfire couldn't deal with the Mitsubishi Zero when they first encountered it, rather like the Fw 190 a year earlier. True, all that speed and manoeverability was at the expense of armament and pilot protection but it was a lean mean piece of design all the same.

I'll vote for the Northrop P-61 Black Widow, since I like the design concept and built a model of it as a kid.

The P-61 has the distinction of being the first US aircraft to be designed as a night fighter and it was packed to the gills with armament.

Armament: Four .50-cal. machine guns in upper turret and four 20mm cannons in belly; 6,400 lbs. of bombs.

Originally posted by longbow

Originally posted by Metdude711
Avro Lancaster

or Bf109

Why Bf109? Didn't they lost to the Spitfires and US planes?

In my opinion it's B-29 bombers. They were almost invulnerable.

Oh yeah!! B-29 were very good aircrafts!!

Aah, I can beat your P-61!

The Bristiol Beaufighter was called 'whispering death' by the Japanese and it was armed with 8 machine guns and four 20mm cannon, like a Spitfire Mk 1 and Mk XIV combined!

Another nomination has to be the De Havilland Mosquito, the first high speed low level strike aircraft in the modern sense and so good that it became a fighter as well, with a similar four MG + four cannon arrangenment to the aforementioned P-61.

Cool waynos... I just tied it into my experience and sentimentality from when I was a child and I built the model of it.

I'm sure there are many more fascinating aircraft to look at.

b-29 , p38. the p51 and all our other fighters were garbage all we had was the b29 and p38 and the germans had the komet