2008_RAND_Pacific_View_Air_Combat_Briefing

How Much Can Quality Compensate for Quantity? (Backup)Unclassified/FOUO/Sensitive• Assessment of Me-262:• “If asked to nominate the most formidablecombat aircraft to evolve in World War II, I wouldunhesitatingly propose Messerschmitt’s Me 262.I say ‘unhesitatingly’ despite having flown theSpitfire in virtually all of its variants, theMosquito, the Lancaster, the Mustang and eventhe Mitsubishi Zero-Sen; all warplanes that mightbe considered for this accolade.”http://www.kheichhorn.de/assets/images/me262_3.jpg• “That, then, was the Me 262, variously known asthe Schwalbe and the Sturmvogel. But bywhatever the appellation, it was in my viewunquestionably the foremost warplane of its day;a hard hitter which outperformed anything thatwe had immediately available but which,fortunately for the Allies, was not available to theLuftwaffe in sufficient numbers to affectdrastically the course of events in the air overEurope. It was a pilots aeroplane which had tobe flown and not just heaved into the air. “Captain Eric ”Winkle” Brown (RN) chief test pilot at theRoyal Aircraft Establishment in Farnborough. Brownflew a world record 487 different types of aircraftincluding virtually all US, UK, German, Italian andJapanese combat aircraft of WWIIAdolf Galland(104 kills)Gerhard Barkhorn(301 kills)Johannes Steinhoff(176 kills)Walter Krupinski(197 kills)Heinrich Bar(221 kills)Günther Lützow(110 kills)Air Combat PPF 61