How the Mustang trampled the Luftwaffe: the role of the P-51 in the defeat of the German air force in World War Two

[HagarTheHorrible]

How the Mustang trampled the Luftwaffe: the role of the P-51 in the defeat of the German air force in World War Two;

 

https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2218&context=gradschool_theses

[Rjel]

7 minutes ago, HagarTheHorrible said:

How the Mustang trampled the Luftwaffe: the role of the P-51 in the defeat of the German air force in World War Two;

 

https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2218&context=gradschool_theses

I'm looking for to reading this. I'm also looking forward to the rebuttals sure to be coming from the internet experts here 'bouts.

[Bremspropeller]

Maybe he should have spent more time in obtaining accurate performance-data and explaining where he's got the data from, what his assumptions are and why he's making them, rather than thinking of a sensational title.

 

He's writing a lot of stuff wrong (which is kind of bad if you want to be a historian) and he's not really coming to a persuasive conclusion how the P-51 really "trampled" the Luftwaffe.

Incredibly sloppy work and certainly not up to usual academic standards. Footnotes? What's that? He's rambling on and on about things that have no business in a detailed work on his subject.

 

Where did he get the CL values from? Did he convert from stall-speed?

Did he use the power-values form that table for his mathematical showcase at 25000ft?

 

Edited April 11, 2020 by Bremspropeller

[Chief_Mouser]

A friend of mine presented a thesis for his History degree that argued that the English Civil War 1642-51 was caused by laws affecting the wearing of hats. Not all graduate studies are to be trusted. ☺️

 

Worryingly, he passed and became a teacher.

Edited April 14, 2020 by 216th_Cat

[Beazil]

I say people aren't wearing enough of them.

[HagarTheHorrible]

I don't want to say anything but, someone who chooses this topic for his thesis, is probably a WW2 combat flightsim fan. If you're flying German, he's the fella behind you with guns blazing.

[Beazil]

5 minutes ago, HagarTheHorrible said:

I don't want to say anything but, someone who chooses this topic for his thesis, is probably a WW2 combat flightsim fan. If you're flying German, he's the fella behind you with guns blazing.

I hate that guy.

[BraveSirRobin]

Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College is also known as The Harvard of the South.  I’m sure this is legit.

[II/JG17_HerrMurf]

Oh my......

[Lusekofte]

Kind of right on the historical part. Good read at least most of it. His conclusions however...

 

That aside looking at our game, with equal skill level and equal fuel supply equal disorder and equal organized flights the outcome of battles is non predictable.  

[busdriver]

On 4/11/2020 at 3:26 PM, Bremspropeller said:

Maybe he should have spent more time in obtaining accurate performance-data and explaining where he's got the data from, what his assumptions are and why he's making them, rather than thinking of a sensational title.

 

After reading the paper I interpreted his intent to mean, "how the arrival of long range P-51 escort fighters, flown by well trained pilots, inflicted a great deal of pain and suffering on an increasingly harried and inexperienced Jagdwaffe." The author was a retired Engineering PhD (college professor) and thus I reckon the reason for his inclusion of performance charts. I think if a reader concentrates on and questions the accuracy of his data and ignores the discussion narrative, where he says the P-51 was not superior in every respect, then the reader has missed the point. 

 

On 4/11/2020 at 3:26 PM, Bremspropeller said:

He's writing a lot of stuff wrong (which is kind of bad if you want to be a historian) and he's not really coming to a persuasive conclusion how the P-51 really "trampled" the Luftwaffe

 

The only fact that I could quibble with was his statement on page 34 that initial 85 gallon external tanks gave the P-51B/C a range of over 400 miles, enough to reach Berlin. If one take Norwich to be a nominal starting point for 8th AF fighters, Berlin is about 500 miles away. But his point is well made, P-47s could make it to western Germany, P-51s could now fly all the way to Berlin. [edit #2] I think the author is referring to the 85 gallon internal fuselage tank that was added to B/Cs.

 

I'm curious what you found to be inaccurate. I have a bunch of the same sources as his bibliography, Roger Freeman is kind of a "go to" 8th Air Force guy. 

 

[edit#3] Mustang Ace  Leonard "Kit" Carson opined on page 14 in the May 1976 issue of Wings, "The availability of 100 plus octane fuel, the Rolls-Royce Merlin, and the Mustang were the three things that turned the strategic battle for air supremacy over Europe around in favor of the Allies in February, 1944. One could also muster a lot of votes in favor of adding the standardization of the Browning 50 calibre gun as a 4th reason for the air war turning in our favor. That choice avoided a lot of clutter and confusion in the logistics of supporting the Air Force."

 

On 4/11/2020 at 3:26 PM, Bremspropeller said:

Incredibly sloppy work and certainly not up to usual academic standards. Footnotes? What's that? He's rambling on and on about things that have no business in a detailed work on his subject.

 

Footnotes? I'm guessing you didn't see page 69 titled references (rather than footnotes)? I found his effort more of an overview rather than detailed. I think you expected him to write only about the P-51.

 

On 4/11/2020 at 3:26 PM, Bremspropeller said:

Where did he get the CL values from? Did he convert from stall-speed?

Did he use the power-values form that table for his mathematical showcase at 25000ft?

 

You could be completely correct, i.e his data is shite. But IMO the data is not the basis of his thesis. In fact my takeaway from the narrative that explains his charts is that superior training allowed P-51 pilots to overcome performance deficiencies when fighting less experienced 109/190 pilots.

 

On 4/11/2020 at 3:51 PM, Jaws2002 said:

Typical sensationalist titles and typical "historians" with a clear agenda.  They have an opinion, then go around cherry-picking and making up "data" to somehow justify their obvious bias.

 

The author was a retired college professor with an engineering PhD. My inference is that he is no academic slouch, and a bit of an overachiever going for another advanced degree. My conjecture is his IMO poor choice of title and his inclusion of charts and numbers (things engineers are wont to do) has confused you. I could find no clear agenda. In fact one might even say the author tells us this explicitly on page 68 where he writes:

 

"It is untrue to say that the Mustang won the war in Europe for the Allied forces. It is even untrue to say that the Mustang won the air war in Europe for the Allied forces. It is certain that the war would have ended without the Mustang's presence at all. However, if the war had continued without it to the same conclusion on the track it was taking in 1943, there is no doubt that the cost of victory would have been much higher …in time, in money, in lives lost, and in futures changed."

 

Can you dispute this final sentence? What is certain is that the appearance of the Merlin-powered Mustang in Europe changed the face of air combat there and hastened the demise of the Luftwaffe as an effective aerial fighting force

 

On 4/11/2020 at 3:51 PM, Jaws2002 said:

" Nothing good came out of Nazi Germany"  campaign is still running strong,  seventy years after the war ended.

 

So apparently you missed the parts where he lauded the Jagdwaffe's early war experience, or lauding the technological superiority of Me-262 or Me-163 or Ta-152 (but not including them because of their small numbers). 

Edited April 13, 2020 by busdriver

[Bremspropeller]

10 hours ago, busdriver said:

After reading the paper I interpreted his intent to mean, "how the arrival of long range P-51 escort fighters, flown by well trained pilots, inflicted a great deal of pain and suffering on an increasingly harried and inexperienced Jagdwaffe." The author was a retired Engineering PhD (college professor) and thus I reckon the reason for his inclusion of performance charts. I think if a reader concentrates on and questions the accuracy of his data and ignores the discussion narrative, where he says the P-51 was not superior in every respect, then the reader has missed the point. 

 

His choice of title implies the P-51 had a direct influence of bringing the war to an end earlier. That is not accurate. It's just part of the story. He later comes to the same conclusion.

It's a bad chioce of title and he'd better combined it with a question-mark. Being provocative in a title sets you up for having to prove stuff.

Unfortunately, this thesis doesn't present anything new to the table, so the title is off.

 

His performance charts are a mystery, as he quotes performance-figures and applies them to an altitude of 25kft - without telling whether he's correcting for HP-loss over altitude (again, what's the source of the data?). I'm sorry to say, but his work has the character of what an excited undergrad-student in his third semester would write as an assignment.

I can promise you a Fw 190 is nowhere near 1500HP at that altitude. Where does that 1500HP figure come from then? It's not rated SL power, either.

 

10 hours ago, busdriver said:

The only fact that I could quibble with was his statement on page 34 that initial 85 gallon external tanks gave the P-51B/C a range of over 400 miles, enough to reach Berlin. If one take Norwich to be a nominal starting point for 8th AF fighters, Berlin is about 500 miles away. But his point is well made, P-47s could make it to western Germany, P-51s could now fly all the way to Berlin. [edit #2] I think the author is referring to the 85 gallon internal fuselage tank that was added to B/Cs.

 

I'm curious what you found to be inaccurate. I have a bunch of the same sources as his bibliography, Roger Freeman is kind of a "go to" 8th Air Force guy. 

 

It starts with being unable to spell "Adolph Galland" or not knowing what the correct designation of a ME 109 is. Little things, but a lot of little things pile up, too.

Lack of thoroughness usually indicates a lack of research or a one-sided research. Like writers copying from each other and not checking on the facts themselves. It's not the 1950s anymore, where people have to rely on stories and pilot's accounts. Most of the archives are wide open now and there's literally tons of literature.

And some of that literature is pretty good.

 

"Hitler's aerial minions" - not exactly the wording one would expect of a factual discussion.

 

Another example is his jumping on the wagon of the old wive's tale that the Luftwaffe used the early war as it's training-ground. Contrary to popular belief, the Luftwaffe was pretty much ready for a break after the Battle of France and it's pilot-training was incapable of replacing losses inflicted during the early years of the war even then. Pilots at the front were worn out.

The real combat training-ground was the Spanish Civil war - it wasn't Goering's airmen that defeated the Amrée de l'air. It was superior tactics and a joint plan of operations (which was too tactical in the end-game and failed miserably in the Soviet Union, when factories were put up beyond the range of german bombers).

Later he's taking up the narrative of BoB being the turning ground of the war (with german losses rising and tipping over the pilot-replacement requiremts).

It wasn't - it's a nice story Churchill came up with and it has stuck ever since. Britain never was an objective of Hitler and the Wehrmacht was ill-prepared to fight it.

 

Another example:

The 109G being well past it's prime. Arguably true, but why?

The 190 being easier to fly. Arguably true, but why?

Those kinds of statements need to be explained, even if it's just a quote of somebody else saying it.

 

Another example:

He's using the loss-ratios and contextuializes them with the air-raid campaign on Germany. He never discusses the figures and the reader is left to interpret how many percent of the losses are due to the bombing-campaigns and how many are due to the battles in the Med and the battles on the Eastern Front (Operation Zitadelle and the Kuban Bridgehead being two of them). While there is an evident corellation with the bombing-campaign, it's not clear if that corellation is causal.

 

While all that isn't playing directly into the core-subject of his thesis, it still shows a lack of willingness to actually work with all the sources available, instead of repeating statements that have been written by other people before and mixing it together.

 

10 hours ago, busdriver said:

Footnotes? I'm guessing you didn't see page 69 titled references (rather than footnotes)? I found his effort more of an overview rather than detailed. I think you expected him to write only about the P-51.

 

I saw them, but footnotes are a bit deeper than just adding a couple of quotation-references or a bibliography. Now, granted this is "just" a Master's thesis, but I have seen PhD dissertations (one of them is Sönke Neitzel's work about the Luftwaffe's role above the skies of Biscay and the North Sea) where the section of footnotes after each chapter might be longer than some chapters of this thesis here. Footnotes can be used to discuss, compare or even reject sources - they're a means of work, not just an indication of how vast one's bookshelf is.

 

Now, being an engineer myself, I can see where the author is coming from - the expectations concerning quotations or footnotes discussing sources are certainly laxer with engineering thesises (as you're usually looking at a designated problem at hand and not building on someone elses's work - maybe except for equations or for solutions of a similar problem, etc. - so there's often nobody to quote from).

 

The theseis presented here is not for another engineering-degree, though, but for an M.A. in history. Therefore, other rules apply.

 

10 hours ago, busdriver said:

You could be completely correct, i.e his data is shite. But IMO the data is not the basis of his thesis. In fact my takeaway from the narrative that explains his charts is that superior training allowed P-51 pilots to overcome performance deficiencies when fighting less experienced 109/190 pilots.

 

Yeah, but if his premise (performance deficiencies) doesn't hold true, what about the rest of his narrative?

The pilot-training just comes on-top.

 

 

 

 

Edited April 13, 2020 by Bremspropeller

[ZachariasX]

I just red the whole of it and it really leaves me with mixed feelings.

 

Fist, I was happy that a graduate student would forfeit his academic future with for his love to that topic. Then, after some reading at page 27 there's a foot note:

 

*Mr. Atwood was the roommate of the author's father, John W. Courter, at the University of Texas. He ultimately became Chief Executive Officer of North American Rockwell Corporation.

 

Ah, well, I see a connection. But, what the heck, his dad?? So, I cheated and skipped to Vita, where:

14 hours ago, busdriver said:

The author was a retired college professor with an engineering PhD.

 

Oh well. There goes the hope of fresh blood to the topic. But engineering you say? These were actually the first hand drawn Excel graphs I've seen in my life! I mean, nothing against that but for the "Harvard of the South" it is rather unconventional. He could have included a photo of the slide rule he used to get the numbers just to show them daft iPad users that real men don't need electricity for their computer. (I put this on the "cool" side.)

 

But then we get to the bottom of what could actually be the purpose of the thesis.

 

It is obvious that from sheer research, this shouldn't qualify at all for a thesis. I would expect a bachelor student to come up with this. Not a Ph.D. A main fault here lies in the author using some 40 years old literature as source without further ado. Even though a book might be "reference", if you come up with something new today, it should be sourced better than the old material. There is more documentation at hand today than it was in the 1970's. Especially when there is a basic claim that particular item XY supposedly defeated the enemy, then there is lots of value in carefully sourced numbers.

 

This however did not seem to be the aim of the work. He liked the doghouse plots and using a paradigm that mainly applies for jet fighters; he reasoned that the Mustang was more than a match for the 109 and the 190. This is ok. The title should have been "Energy Maneuverability Analysis of the P-51, Bf-109G and the Fw-190(A)" and from this he could conclude that the Mustang is an aircraft that could fly from England to Berlin and there be competitive in a fight AND fly home (mostly).

 

That would also have excused his rather biased perception of the history presented, mainly recounting old dogmas like "In order to win WW2, you needed strategic bombing (hence it is clear that if you didn't you lost, and you didn't because I define it so)", "Germans and Hitler in particular, especially the fat one!, were stupid, hence they committed error XYZ and lost WW2 (but imagine had they been a tad smarter!)". It's just a bit sore on the eyes. However, for the author’s generation, I think we can let him get away with that.

 

It is just not possible not somehow liking someone who likes the Mustang.