r/WWIIplanes • u/waffen123 • 3d ago

Official Caption: "U.S. P-51 fighter planes fly from a staging area to their base on Iwo Jima. These long-range fighters are capable of conducting strafing attacks on the Japanese home islands and serving as escorts for B-29 Fortress. Bombers operating from bases in the Marianas to Japan. 1945

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608 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

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13

u/APOC_V 3d ago

That sound must have been glorious!

8

u/muklukdimsum 3d ago

Cadillac of the skies

7

u/buldozr 3d ago

This, and shutting down a Japanese radar, were the reasons why the battle of Iwo Jima was fought.

3

u/4WDToyotaOwner 3d ago

If they had to drop tanks here, seems some ships aft would be at risk of impacts

3

u/Competitive-Dot-4264 3d ago

That’s enough p-51 s to start a respectable war .

2

u/Rowing_Boatman 2d ago

Or even start one over football (soccer)!

3

u/VirginiaLuthier 3d ago

If these had become operational a few years earlier, many, many more bombers would have survived the daylight bombing campaign over Europe

9

u/Brambleshire 3d ago edited 2d ago

P38s and P47s with drop tanks could escort long range also. They were doing so at such ranges in the Pacific before the P51 got to Europe. It was bomber command that insisted on unescorted bombers.

0

u/aus_ge_zeich_net 2d ago

The P38s were not that good as escorts tbh

2

u/Brambleshire 2d ago

Even if that's true (which I'm not sure it is), it doesn't follow that therefore the bombers needed to be totally unescorted.

1

u/Plutonian_Might 2d ago

If the Me 262s had become operational a few years earlier then not really.

1

u/UnrealRealityForReal 2d ago

Plus the doctrine that Doolittle changed from hanging tight with the bombers and waiting for the Germans to arrive, to going out and engaging them further out directly.

1

u/manyhippofarts 1d ago

I'm glad the war ended when it did. Because those Messerschmidt jets were gonna be tough for even the mustangs to handle. Thankfully the Germans hadn't perfected the tech, or at least they couldn't make them fast enough to really matter.

-12

u/flashbang69 3d ago

And if the Germans had launched the ME-262 a few years earlier we would all be speaking German now. Your comment makes no sense at all.

-8

u/MilesHobson 3d ago

Haven’t thought of this before but the Japanese kamikazes and this formation were the roots of drone swarms.