[m21sniper]

Originally Posted by tabs

When the Allies made their landings on 6 June 1944 they were opposed by exactly 2 German fighters.
One of the 2 was Pips Priller...

No matter what you say the German fighter pilots thought the P-38 was a sitting duck for them...Read Horrido by Trevor and Constable

To some of the top aces ANY plane was a sitting duck.

The problem with the early Lightnings were their dive problems which the Luftwaffe pilots could exploit by diving away, and thier poor initial roll rate.
Once it was rolled though, the P-38 would out turn any other US fighter, and out climb any other US fighter as well. The J model and later Lightnings corrected both the dive compressibility issues and the poor initial roll rate, and those planes were as good if not better than anything the US put in the skies in WWII.

The top 2 US fighter aces of WWII both flew P-38s, which i would suggest is no coincidence.

Originally Posted by tabs

Also are you going to argue with Adolf Galland...about the difference the ME262 would have made if it had been introduced earlier?

But it couldn't have been introducted much earlier than it actually was, the factory was destroyed in a bombing raid. By the time it was rebuilt and Me262s were again rolling off the line, it was already too late.

Originally Posted by tabs

Can you say Schweinfurt and Black Thursday...on a couple of missions the US lost about 120 bombers in October of 43. This caused the US command to discontinue daylight raids until early 1944 when the P-51 was introduced. Read Martin Caidins Black Thursday...

There were no P-38s escorting on Black Thursday, and by the time the P-51D was introduced the P-38s had already brought the loss rates down to acceptable levels.

"Throughout the summer and fall, Eighth Air Force bomber crews were experiencing a monthly attrition rate of 30 percent, while Luftwaffe pilots died at a rate less than half that of the Americans. Of the 35 aircrews that arrived in England with the 100th Bomb Group at the end of May 1943, only 14 percent of the men made it through the 25 missions required for rotation. The rest were dead, wounded, missing, psychological cases or prisoners of war. The message was clear: Bombers could not survive beyond the range of fighter escort. After Black Week, Eaker called off further penetrations and pondered his dilemma. The American daylight bombing campaign against Germany had reached a crisis point.

The changes eventually made to Operation Pointblank in 1944 came from several sources. Major General James H. ‘Jimmy’ Doolittle replaced Eaker as the Eighth Air Force commander on January 6, 1944. Doolittle’s experience as commander of the Northwest African Strategic Air Force during Operation Torch had convinced him of the critical importance of fighter escorts to the success of bombardment. With a fighter-escort advocate at the helm of the Eighth Air Force, the doctrine of air superiority took on greater importance. Not only would bombers continue to strike key aircraft industries, but increasing numbers of American fighter escorts would aggressively attack the Luftwaffe as the Germans rose to attack heavy bomber formations. The American fighters would also dive below 20,000 feet in search of enemy aircraft in the air and on the ground.

Building on engineering projects in 1943, the Eighth Air Force mounted wing and belly tanks on its Lockheed P-38 Lightning and Republic P-47 Thunderbolt fighters."

http://www.historynet.com/operation-pointblank-evolution-of-allied-air-doctrine-during-world-war-ii.htm/3

The P-38 could have been doing this mission from day 1 of the air war in the ETO. And had the plane been properly vetted in realistic operational wargames the early model P-38s problems could have been largely corrected before a single plane ever took the war to the Germans. This was not done, obviously...and thousands needlessly died as a result.

Originally Posted by tabs

The T-34 always suffered horrendous losses..The Russian idea of maneuver was to line up 20,000 men and say charge, if that didn't get er done they would line up another 20,000 and do it over again until the Germans caved... Read Hitler Moves East and Scorched Earth by Paul Carrel. Also Guderian's and Manstein's memiors.

While true, the T-34 was still outmoded by wars end by several other tank designs. I'd have preferred a Panther, an M4 "easy eight" or a GB Firefly over a T-34 personally- if it was my tail on the line. I think anyone would.

The T-34 made it's name for itself in the early-mid war time frame. Against early war PzIII's it was highly dominant and was still very comparable to the PzIV series.