What plane do you think would win this dog-fight (not considering pilots experience/ability)?

Hi,
the Fw 190 was regarded as one of the best planes to come from the war, so I'll go for that.
I'm sure the more sage and wise will add to this
Cheers
Peter

If the pilots started at the same height and speed I would suggest the FW190 would come out on top most times. It had a superior rate of roll and turning circle so would be a better dogfighter. However the P47 was a much heavier fighter so it would probably be able to disengage better by diving away.

These were two highly successful aircraft, though with different relative strengths. The winner would absolutely be the plane flown by the better pilot, an/or the one with a positional/altitude/velocity/awareness advantage at the begining of the fight.

As Martin's post indicates, a good Jug pilot would use "energy tactics" (rather than angles tactics) by playing in the vertical (for ex., using dive speed to disengage at will) and using the 47's eight .50 cal guns to make devastating slashing attacks of short duration. The Jug would get waxed if it slowed down to turn with the butcher bird, but only a foolish P-47 pilot would do that.

The focke Wulf was a greater fighter than the Thunderbolt...but the P´47 was a greater bomber than the Fw190

Also depends on the version of P-47 - among D models, some had propeller fits that made it a hell of a climber. Robert Johnson said that he flew a mock dogfight against a Spitfire IX after his plane got a Curtiss paddle-bladed prop installed, and that he overtook the Spit all the way to 25,000 feet. And the Spit IX was known for being able to outclimb the 190A series.

And the P-47 was a pretty good high-speed roller too.

:-) It seems that the P-47 could at least hold it's own against the Fw 190, according to an article in the latest edition of SAMI. Must admit that this did surprise me, one advantage that the "Jug" had was it's abbility to take punishment and still get it's pilot home.
Look at it another way, would you prefer to be in a Fw190, trying to defend the "homeland" or in a squadron of "Jugs" beating the **it out of anything that dared to take to the air?
No contest, I'll have the Jug anyday :-)
Mal

Speaking about a squadron of Jugs, I recently picked up a print of 4 Jugs from the 56th fighter group chasing Gunther Rall in his ME-109. The painting is by John D. Shaw, an outstanding aircraft artist,Wingman out

P-47.

As with all military machine match ups, so much depends on the human and enviromental factors. I for one would prefer to have more armor around me and be able to take a more of a punishment. Japanses Zeros come to mind---a few well placed round and they would explode, very fragile, but extremely fast and deadly....its the classic trade-off. So I'd have to go with the P-47

Sean

It would also depend on the altitude. The FW-190s performance started to fall off over 25,000 ft., while the P-47 was just getting into its element of a high altitude fighter. As mentioned before, the propeller on the Thunderbolt would make a difference, as well as the model. Plus the P-47 could absorb a lot of damage and still keep on flying. I'm a real P-47 fan, so I'd go with the Thunderbolt.

-Charlie

the P-47 would have a chance if it crashed against the FW109, nothing would happen to that flying tank..... #:-)

Beginning of the conflict, the 190 and the later part, the p-47 would because the germans were green!
:-)

I would put my money on the butcher bird over a p47. Sure the p-47 was a flying tank, but you forget just how deadly the butcher was. 4 mg 151 cannons firing mine shells = dead plane. Or 2 30 mm cannons = dead plane. or extra 20 mm cannons = dead plane. Basically, if the p 47 got shots off on the 190, it would be bad, but if the 190 shot the p 47, bye bye p 47.

I think you're discounting the effectiveness of the U.S. M2 .50 cal, and the fact that the P-47 had eight of them. The cannon shells of the 190 were deadly, to be sure, but the 190's armament was really optimized for shooting down bombers. Their cannon had slower rates of fire and lower muzzle velocities (thus shorter effective/accurate ranges) than the M2 did. A U.S. .50 cal round is in no way comparable to a rifle round; there are explosive, incendiary, and aromor-piercing .50 cal rounds. They're really about halfway between a true MG and a cannon. Eight .50's would chew up a 190 in pretty short order, and with a higher hit probability than the cannon of the 190.

I still think it's a fairly even fight, with the better (or luckier/better positioned at the outset) pilot flying away the winner.

it would be the 47 for sure

It is true that the 50 cal are very effective, but tough or not, if the p-47 was in the sights of a 190, it would be dead. I am not sure about the muzzle velocity point because I am pretty sure the mg 151 was a high velocity gun, but I would have to check.

I also think that in the hands of a competent pilot the 190 was one heck of a plane. I can't remember the name of it, but there was an escape move tht one of the aces that flew it used that shows just how amazing the plane was. If he couldn't shake somebody on his six, as the other plane brought up its nose to get a shot off, he would slam on the rudder and the plane would slide in mid-air while staying up just on the lift from the propeller blade. Since he was under the nose of the enemy, they wouln't know what happened until he was long gone or possibly on his 6.
-I heard about that a while ago, so I am not sure about my memory, but if i got that correct, that shows just much of a fighter plane the butcher bird was.

Well, in "Flying Aces" (Aviation Art), a painting called Not My Turn To Die talks about something like this:
Also, in the end, the German pilot pulled up alongside the Thunderbolt, looked over, saluted, and flew away. Thanks for your time.

Ahhhhhhh, I love questions like this! I've asked same about so many acft (aircraft) comparisons over the years and I still can't get enough!

I haven't read all the other posts so I may be beating a dead horse.

What I've learned is that there is often no easy answer to which is the better fighter. Many factors apply such as version, block number of version, configuration, and especially altitude and amount of fuel to run those engines at METO (maximum except [for] takeoff). You mean both in air-to-air configuration on a fighter sweep with equivalent gas, so I'll speak as such. I will also consider only matching the versions that generally antagonized eachother.

Still it is not as simple as you may think: the FW-190A-3 and -4 was the fighter that almost swept the Spitfire V from the sky in '41-42, parity with the Spit IX. Against the P-47B/C it usually had superior climb and turn radius, while rate of roll was about the same, and the Jug would out-dive the 'Butcher-bird' (though not at first, the FW's superior acceleration would pull it ahead until the Jug's friendship with gravity took over). Now, I stated 'usually had superior climb and turn radius'. The P-47 was built to operate at high altitude while all BMW powered FW-190s were best up to FL200 (20,000 feet). Up high the P-47 came into its own (above FL300 the Jug could generally out perform the P-51) while the -190, I've read in the words of a FW pilot, "...hung like fat sausages..." The BMW rapidly lost performance while the R-2800 really got going; the P-47 had more power to yank-n-bank and thus could out-fly the FW. The Luftwaffe knew the BMW has gutless up where the 8th AF attacked from and started work on the Dora, the Jumos powered "Long-nose" FW-190D in '42(?).

BTW, I read a Jug pilot's account that from FL300, the P-47D could dive to FL250 and zoom to above FL350 faster than it could climb from FL300 directly to FL350.

With the afore mentioned paddleblade props on the -47, the -190 could only rely on tighter turn radius. A thought on turning. The FW had superb control harmony. Yet it had such a nasty stall, many pilots would not fly it to the edge of its envelope for that reason. I do not recall the P-47 having any detrimental flight characteristics (compressibility aside), so a Jug pilot could whip his bird around with abandon. Handling characteristics are more important than most laypeople realize.

The FW-190A-8 began to get heavy and lost more performance. Still a match for the P-47B/C, but enter the P-47D: performance parity at the Focke-Wulf's medium and low altitudes, still ruling above FL200. The -47D was even a close match for the Dora, the Jumos-powered FW-190, "Long-nose".

We could get into more if we expand the question to include the 470mph P-47M, (which the 56th was partially equipped with) vs the 472mph Ta-152. However, the data is more speculative. I've read antedotes that the Ta-152 had almost Zero-like maneuverability at low level. I've also read that on Saipan, pilot bravado lead to a mock dogfight between the P-47 and the P-61 Black Widow, and the only view the Jug had of the Widow was over his shoulder into the P-61's guns! I also read in the book Top Guns a short about 'Big John' (don't recall his name or even squadron) and his P-38L in a dogfight with an RAF Wing Cmdr in a Spit XIV. The story is that the fight started high, ended just above the trees, and the Spit was filled his gun camera film!

In short, both were dangerous to each other. The early FW was meaner up to FL200, above that the P-47 ruled--the higher the mightier!

For further reading, seek out Duels in the Sky, by RN Capt. Eric Brown. A fascinating book by a fascinating man. He flew virtually every fighter of every combatant--except Soviet--in W.W.II as a test pilot. He used his notes and memory to 'what if' nearly everything: F4F vs FW-190, ME-262 vs Hellcat, A6M3 'Zeke 32' vs FW-190A-4... . Incredible.

Oh yeah, about 10 years ago the Experimental Aircraft Assoc. decided to take up the question about the US's best in W.W.II. They took the F4U, F6F, P-47D and P-51D and ran them through various criteria, including taxi performance and cockpit comfort, pounds of pull for G-forces, etc. Now, the fly off was artificial because they limited it to FL100 and less than METO (old airframes and engines, ya know?). Some of their data doesn't jive with what I read the W.W.II say. Anyway, as I recall, they decided the F6F was our best fighter of W.W.II.

There are now many flight test results coming to light now. Some differ, some don't seem to reflect operational results, and some are one pilot's opinion against another's. All are valuable.

Regards,

Fred