[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Stealhead

For starters the way they have the BF109s set up is wrong they did have good acceleration but nothing near what they have in IL-2.

I have to disagree with you on some of these points. The Bf-109 (at least the late models) had one of the best climb rates and acceleration of the period. The early models not so much.

The truth is that the BF109 was a fairly good design but it was hard for a pilot to get the best from it which is always a weakness the Spitfire on the other hand even a relatively inexperienced pilot could get the max performance out of a Spitfire safely and that goes a log way.

If I was going to pick one best air to air combat aircraft from WWII it would be the Spitfire easily because it was a very easy aircraft to fly(in real life) and it took little skill for a lay pilot to fly one effectively that factor is very important because the easier it is for a pilot to fly his mount the more effective he will be in combat.

Quite the opposite. The Spitfire could out-turn a 109, but had the problem of being very touchy while doing so. The semi-elliptical wing had a nasty tendency to stall, and the plane had the very bad characteristic of instantly going into an inverted flat spin. It was said that the expected pullout distance of that spin was about 5000 feet, so if it happened at low altitudes you could have serious problems. The Bf-109, on the other hand, was fairly gentle in a stall (though not so much as the FW-190, which was said to be practically unspinnable), and would fall off to one side in a gentle spiral when the pilot screwed up. Couple that with negative-G capability which no Spitfire had until the Mark IX, and while the Spit had superior maneuverabilty it took a seasoned pilot to get the best out of it.

I saw a TV show once where a former German ace sat in a Spitfire he was very impressed and wished that he had a Spitfire over a BF109 based on what he saw of them in combat and on what he felt from the seat.

And when Hermann Goering asked Adolph Galland if there was anything he could get him to aid in the Battle Of Britain, Galland famously replied "A squadron of Spitfires." And when a former German ace flew a P-47 for the first time, he said the cockpit was so roomy he felt like he could run around inside dodging bullets.

In my opinion there was no "best" fighter in WW2, at least among the group of very best. The Spitfire was tight-turning, the Bf-109 was fast climbing and fast-rolling, the Mustang had extremely long range, the P-47 was amazingly rugged, and they all did their respective jobs superlatively. I would love to be able to fly any of them. And I didn't even mention the Japanese or the US Navy fighters. Silly me.