Yes, Native Americans Were the Victims of Genocide

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Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz grew up in rural Oklahoma, the daughter of a tenant farmer and part-Indian mother. She has been active in the international Indigenous movement for more than four decades and is known for her lifelong commitment to national and international social justice issues. After receiving her PhD in history at the University of California at Los Angeles, she taught in the newly established Native American Studies Program at California State University, Hayward, and helped found the Departments of Ethnic Studies and Women’s Studies. Her latest book is An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States.

Mass Grave at Wounded Knee


This paper, written under the title, “U.S. Settler-Colonialism and Genocide Policies,” was delivered at the Organization of American Historians 2015 Annual Meeting in St. Louis, MO on April 18, 2015.

US policies and actions related to Indigenous peoples, though often termed “racist” or “discriminatory,” are rarely depicted as what they are: classic cases of imperialism and a particular form of colonialism—settler colonialism. As anthropologist Patrick Wolfe writes, “The question of genocide is never far from discussions of settler colonialism. Land is life—or, at least, land is necessary for life.”i The history of the United States is a history of settler colonialism.

The extension of the United States from sea to shining sea was the intention and design of the country’s founders. “Free” land was the magnet that attracted European settlers. After the war for independence but preceding the writing of the US Constitution, the Continental Congress produced the Northwest Ordinance. This was the first law of the incipient republic, revealing the motive for those desiring independence. It was the blueprint for gobbling up the British-protected Indian Territory (“Ohio Country”) on the other side of the Appalachians and Alleghenies. Britain had made settlement there illegal with the Proclamation of 1763.

In 1801, President Jefferson aptly described the new settler state’s intentions for horizontal and vertical continental expansion, stating: “However our present interests may restrain us within our own limits, it is impossible not to look forward to distant times, when our rapid multiplication will expand itself beyond those limits and cover the whole northern, if not the southern continent, with a people speaking the same language, governed in similar form by similar laws.” This vision of manifest destiny found form a few years later in the Monroe Doctrine, signaling the intention of annexing or dominating former Spanish colonial territories in the Americas and the Pacific, which would be put into practice during the rest of the century.

The form of colonialism that the Indigenous peoples of North America have experienced was modern from the beginning: the expansion of European corporations, backed by government armies, into foreign areas, with subsequent expropriation of lands and resources. Settler colonialism requires a genocidal policy. Native nations and communities, while struggling to maintain fundamental values and collectivity, have from the beginning resisted modern colonialism using both defensive and offensive techniques, including the modern forms of armed resistance of national liberation movements and what now is called terrorism. In every instance they have fought and continue to fight for survival as peoples. The objective of US authorities was to terminate their existence as peoples—not as random individuals. This is the very definition of modern genocide.

The objective of US colonialist authorities was to terminate their existence as peoples—not as random individuals. This is the very definition of modern genocide as contrasted with premodern instances of extreme violence that did not have the goal of extinction. The United States as a socioeconomic and political entity is a result of this centuries-long and ongoing colonial process. Modern Indigenous nations and communities are societies formed by their resistance to colonialism, through which they have carried their practices and histories. It is breathtaking, but no miracle, that they have survived as peoples.

Settler-colonialism requires violence or the threat of violence to attain its goals, which then forms the foundation of the United States’ system. People do not hand over their land, resources, children, and futures without a fight, and that fight is met with violence. In employing the force necessary to accomplish its expansionist goals, a colonizing regime institutionalizes violence. The notion that settler-indigenous conflict is an inevitable product of cultural differences and misunderstandings, or that violence was committed equally by the colonized and the colonizer, blurs the nature of the historical processes. Euro-American colonialism, an aspect of the capitalist economic globalization, had from its beginnings a genocidal tendency.

So, what constitutes genocide? My colleague on the panel, Gary Clayton Anderson, in his recent book, “Ethnic Cleansing and the Indian,” argues: “Genocide will never become a widely accepted characterization for what happened in North America, because large numbers of Indians survived and because policies of mass murder on a scale similar to events in central Europe, Cambodia, or Rwanda were never implemented.”ii There are fatal errors in this assessment.

The term “genocide” was coined following the Shoah, or Holocaust, and its prohibition was enshrined in the United Nations convention presented in 1948 and adopted in 1951: the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The convention is not retroactive but is applicable to US-Indigenous relations since 1988, when the US Senate ratified it. The genocide convention is an essential tool for historical analysis of the effects of colonialism in any era, and particularly in US history.

In the convention, any one of five acts is considered genocide if “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”:

(a) killing members of the group;

(b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.iii


The followings acts are punishable:

(a) Genocide;

(b) Conspiracy to commit genocide;

(c) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide;

(d) Attempt to commit genocide;

(e) Complicity in genocide.


The term “genocide” is often incorrectly used, such as in Dr. Anderson’s assessment, to describe extreme examples of mass murder, the death of vast numbers of people, as, for instance in Cambodia. What took place in Cambodia was horrific, but it does not fall under the terms of the Genocide Convention, as the Convention specifically refers to a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, with individuals within that group targeted by a government or its agents because they are members of the group or by attacking the underpinnings of the group’s existence as a group being met with the intent to destroy that group in whole or in part. The Cambodian government committed crimes against humanity, but not genocide. Genocide is not an act simply worse than anything else, rather a specific kind of act. The term, “ethnic cleansing,” is a descriptive term created by humanitarian interventionists to describe what was said to be happening in the 1990s wars among the republics of Yugoslavia. It is a descriptive term, not a term of international humanitarian law.

Although clearly the Holocaust was the most extreme of all genocides, the bar set by the Nazis is not the bar required to be considered genocide. The title of the Genocide convention is the “Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,” so the law is about preventing genocide by identifying the elements of government policy, rather than only punishment after the fact. Most importantly, genocide does not have to be complete to be considered genocide.

US history, as well as inherited Indigenous trauma, cannot be understood without dealing with the genocide that the United States committed against Indigenous peoples. From the colonial period through the founding of the United States and continuing in the twentieth century, this has entailed torture, terror, sexual abuse, massacres, systematic military occupations, removals of Indigenous peoples from their ancestral territories, forced removal of Native American children to military-like boarding schools, allotment, and a policy of termination.

Within the logic of settler-colonialism, genocide was the inherent overall policy of the United States from its founding, but there are also specific documented policies of genocide on the part of US administrations that can be identified in at least four distinct periods: the Jacksonian era of forced removal; the California gold rush in Northern California; during the Civil War and in the post Civil War era of the so-called Indian Wars in the Southwest and the Great Plains; and the 1950s termination period; additionally, there is the overlapping period of compulsory boarding schools, 1870s to 1960s. The Carlisle boarding school, founded by US Army officer Richard Henry Pratt in 1879, became a model for others established by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). Pratt said in a speech in 1892, "A great general has said that the only good Indian is a dead one. In a sense, I agree with the sentiment, but only in this: that all the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him and save the man."

Cases of genocide carried out as policy may be found in historical documents as well as in the oral histories of Indigenous communities. An example from 1873 is typical, with General William T. Sherman writing, “We must act with vindictive earnestness against the Sioux, even to their extermination, men, women and children . . . during an assault, the soldiers can not pause to distinguish between male and female, or even discriminate as to age.”iv

The so-called “Indian Wars” technically ended around 1880, although the Wounded Knee massacre occurred a decade later. Clearly an act with genocidal intent, it is still officially considered a “battle” in the annals of US military genealogy. Congressional Medals of Honor were bestowed on twenty of the soldiers involved. A monument was built at Fort Riley, Kansas, to honor the soldiers killed by friendly fire. A battle streamer was created to honor the event and added to other streamers that are displayed at the Pentagon, West Point, and army bases throughout the world. L. Frank Baum, a Dakota Territory settler later famous for writing The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, edited the Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer at the time. Five days after the sickening event at Wounded Knee, on January 3, 1891, he wrote, “The Pioneer has before declared that our only safety depends upon the total extermination of the Indians. Having wronged them for centuries we had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up by one or more wrong and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of the earth.”

Whether 1880 or 1890, most of the collective land base that Native Nations secured through hard fought for treaties made with the United States was lost after that date.

After the end of the Indian Wars, came allotment, another policy of genocide of Native nations as nations, as peoples, the dissolution of the group. Taking the Sioux Nation as an example, even before the Dawes Allotment Act of 1884 was implemented, and with the Black Hills already illegally confiscated by the federal government, a government commission arrived in Sioux territory from Washington, DC, in 1888 with a proposal to reduce the Sioux Nation to six small reservations, a scheme that would leave nine million acres open for Euro-American settlement. The commission found it impossible to obtain signatures of the required three-fourths of the nation as required under the 1868 treaty, and so returned to Washington with a recommendation that the government ignore the treaty and take the land without Sioux consent. The only means to accomplish that goal was legislation, Congress having relieved the government of the obligation to negotiate a treaty. Congress commissioned General George Crook to head a delegation to try again, this time with an offer of $1.50 per acre. In a series of manipulations and dealings with leaders whose people were now starving, the commission garnered the needed signatures. The great Sioux Nation was broken into small islands soon surrounded on all sides by European immigrants, with much of the reservation land a checkerboard with settlers on allotments or leased land.v Creating these isolated reservations broke the historical relationships between clans and communities of the Sioux Nation and opened areas where Europeans settled. It also allowed the Bureau of Indian Affairs to exercise tighter control, buttressed by the bureau’s boarding school system. The Sun Dance, the annual ceremony that had brought Sioux together and reinforced national unity, was outlawed, along with other religious ceremonies. Despite the Sioux people’s weak position under late-nineteenth-century colonial domination, they managed to begin building a modest cattle-ranching business to replace their former bison-hunting economy. In 1903, the US Supreme Court ruled, in Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock, that a March 3, 1871, appropriations rider was constitutional and that Congress had “plenary” power to manage Indian property. The Office of Indian Affairs could thus dispose of Indian lands and resources regardless of the terms of previous treaty provisions. Legislation followed that opened the reservations to settlement through leasing and even sale of allotments taken out of trust. Nearly all prime grazing lands came to be occupied by non-Indian ranchers by the 1920s.

By the time of the New Deal–Collier era and nullification of Indian land allotment under the Indian Reorganization Act, non-Indians outnumbered Indians on the Sioux reservations three to one. However, “tribal governments” imposed in the wake of the Indian Reorganization Act proved particularly harmful and divisive for the Sioux.”vi Concerning this measure, the late Mathew King, elder traditional historian of the Oglala Sioux (Pine Ridge), observed: “The Bureau of Indian Affairs drew up the constitution and by-laws of this organization with the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934. This was the introduction of home rule. . . . The traditional people still hang on to their Treaty, for we are a sovereign nation. We have our own government.”vii “Home rule,” or neocolonialism, proved a short-lived policy, however, for in the early 1950s the United States developed its termination policy, with legislation ordering gradual eradication of every reservation and even the tribal governments.viii At the time of termination and relocation, per capita annual income on the Sioux reservations stood at $355, while that in nearby South Dakota towns was $2,500. Despite these circumstances, in pursuing its termination policy, the Bureau of Indian Affairs advocated the reduction of services and introduced its program to relocate Indians to urban industrial centers, with a high percentage of Sioux moving to San Francisco and Denver in search of jobs.ix

The situations of other Indigenous Nations were similar.

Pawnee Attorney Walter R. Echo-Hawk writes:

In 1881, Indian landholdings in the United States had plummeted to 156 million acres. By 1934, only about 50 million acres remained (an area the size of Idaho and Washington) as a result of the General Allotment Act of 1887. During World War II, the government took 500,000 more acres for military use. Over one hundred tribes, bands, and Rancherias relinquished their lands under various acts of Congress during the termination era of the 1950s. By 1955, the indigenous land base had shrunk to just 2.3 percent of its [size at the end of the Indian wars].x


According to the current consensus among historians, the wholesale transfer of land from Indigenous to Euro-American hands that occurred in the Americas after 1492 is due less to British and US American invasion, warfare, refugee conditions, and genocidal policies in North America than to the bacteria that the invaders unwittingly brought with them. Historian Colin Calloway is among the proponents of this theory writing, “Epidemic diseases would have caused massive depopulation in the Americas whether brought by European invaders or brought home by Native American traders.”xi Such an absolutist assertion renders any other fate for the Indigenous peoples improbable. This is what anthropologist Michael Wilcox has dubbed “the terminal narrative.” Professor Calloway is a careful and widely respected historian of Indigenous North America, but his conclusion articulates a default assumption. The thinking behind the assumption is both ahistorical and illogical in that Europe itself lost a third to one-half of its population to infectious disease during medieval pandemics. The principle reason the consensus view is wrong and ahistorical is that it erases the effects of settler colonialism with its antecedents in the Spanish “Reconquest” and the English conquest of Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. By the time Spain, Portugal, and Britain arrived to colonize the Americas, their methods of eradicating peoples or forcing them into dependency and servitude were ingrained, streamlined, and effective.

Whatever disagreement may exist about the size of precolonial Indigenous populations, no one doubts that a rapid demographic decline occurred in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, its timing from region to region depending on when conquest and colonization began. Nearly all the population areas of the Americas were reduced by 90 percent following the onset of colonizing projects, decreasing the targeted Indigenous populations of the Americas from a one hundred million to ten million. Commonly referred to as the most extreme demographic disaster—framed as natural—in human history, it was rarely called genocide until the rise of Indigenous movements in the mid-twentieth century forged new questions.

US scholar Benjamin Keen acknowledges that historians “accept uncritically a fatalistic ‘epidemic plus lack of acquired immunity’ explanation for the shrinkage of Indian populations, without sufficient attention to the socioeconomic factors . . . which predisposed the natives to succumb to even slight infections.”xii Other scholars agree. Geographer William M. Denevan, while not ignoring the existence of widespread epidemic diseases, has emphasized the role of warfare, which reinforced the lethal impact of disease. There were military engagements directly between European and Indigenous nations, but many more saw European powers pitting one Indigenous nation against another or factions within nations, with European allies aiding one or both sides, as was the case in the colonization of the peoples of Ireland, Africa and Asia, and was also a factor in the Holocaust. Other killers cited by Denevan are overwork in mines, frequent outright butchery, malnutrition and starvation resulting from the breakdown of Indigenous trade networks, subsistence food production and loss of land, loss of will to live or reproduce (and thus suicide, abortion, and infanticide), and deportation and enslavement.xiii Anthropologist Henry Dobyns has pointed to the interruption of Indigenous peoples’ trade networks. When colonizing powers seized Indigenous trade routes, the ensuing acute shortages, including food products, weakened populations and forced them into dependency on the colonizers, with European manufactured goods replacing Indigenous ones. Dobyns has estimated that all Indigenous groups suffered serious food shortages one year in four. In these circumstances, the introduction and promotion of alcohol proved addictive and deadly, adding to the breakdown of social order and responsibility.xiv These realities render the myth of “lack of immunity,” including to alcohol, pernicious.

Historian Woodrow Wilson Borah focused on the broader arena of European colonization, which also brought severely reduced populations in the Pacific Islands, Australia, Western Central America, and West Africa.xv Sherburne Cook—associated with Borah in the revisionist Berkeley School, as it was called—studied the attempted destruction of the California Indians. Cook estimated 2,245 deaths among peoples in Northern California—the Wintu, Maidu, Miwak, Omo, Wappo, and Yokuts nations—in late eighteenth-century armed conflicts with the Spanish while some 5,000 died from disease and another 4,000 were relocated to missions. Among the same people in the second half of the nineteenth century, US armed forces killed 4,000, and disease killed another 6,000. Between 1852 and 1867, US citizens kidnapped 4,000 Indian children from these groups in California. Disruption of Indigenous social structures under these conditions and dire economic necessity forced many of the women into prostitution in goldfield camps, further wrecking what vestiges of family life remained in these matriarchal societies.

Historians and others who deny genocide emphasize population attrition by disease, weakening Indigenous peoples ability to resist. In doing so they refuse to accept that the colonization of America was genocidal by plan, not simply the tragic fate of populations lacking immunity to disease. If disease could have done the job, it is not clear why the United States found it necessary to carry out unrelenting wars against Indigenous communities in order to gain every inch of land they took from them—along with the prior period of British colonization, nearly three hundred years of eliminationist warfare.

In the case of the Jewish Holocaust, no one denies that more Jews died of starvation, overwork, and disease under Nazi incarceration than died in gas ovens or murdered by other means, yet the acts of creating and maintaining the conditions that led to those deaths clearly constitute genocide. And no one recites the terminal narrative associated with Native Americans, or Armenians, or Bosnian.

Not all of the acts iterated in the genocide convention are required to exist to constitute genocide; any one of them suffices. In cases of United States genocidal policies and actions, each of the five requirements can be seen.

First, Killing members of the group: The genocide convention does not specify that large numbers of people must be killed in order to constitute genocide, rather that members of the group are killed because they are members of the group. Assessing a situation in terms of preventing genocide, this kind of killing is a marker for intervention.

Second, Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group: such as starvation, the control of food supply and withholding food as punishment or as reward for compliance, for instance, in signing confiscatory treaties. As military historian John Grenier points out in his First Way of War:

For the first 200 years of our military heritage, then, Americans depended on arts of war that contemporary professional soldiers supposedly abhorred: razing and destroying enemy villages and fields; killing enemy women and children; raiding settlements for captives; intimidating and brutalizing enemy noncombatants; and assassinating enemy leaders. . . . In the frontier wars between 1607 and 1814, Americans forged two elements—unlimited war and irregular war—into their first way of war.xvii


Grenier argues that not only did this way of war continue throughout the 19th century in wars against the Indigenous nations, but continued in the 20th century and currently in counterinsurgent wars against peoples in Latin America, the Caribbean and Pacific, Southeast Asia, Middle and Western Asia and Africa.

Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part: Forced removal of all the Indigenous nations east of the Mississippi to Indian Territory during the Jackson administration was a calculated policy intent on destroying those peoples ties to their original lands, as well as declaring Native people who did not remove to no longer be Muskogee, Sauk, Kickapoo, Choctaw, destroying the existence of up to half of each nation removed. Mandatory boarding schools, Allotment and Termination—all official government policies--also fall under this category of the crime of genocide. The forced removal and four year incarceration of the Navajo people resulted in the death of half their population.

Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group: Famously, during the Termination Era, the US government administrated Indian Health Service made the top medical priority the sterilization of Indigenous women. In 1974, an independent study by one the few Native American physicians, Dr. Connie Pinkerton-Uri, Choctaw/Cherokee, found that one in four Native women had been sterilized without her consent. Pnkerton-Uri’s research indicated that the Indian Health Service had “singled out full-blooded Indian women for sterilization procedures.” At first denied by the Indian Health Service, two years later, a study by the U.S. General Accounting Office found that 4 of the 12 Indian Health Service regions sterilized 3,406 Native women without their permission between 1973 and 1976. The GAO found that 36 women under age 21 had been forcibly sterilized during this period despite a court-ordered moratorium on sterilizations of women younger than 21.

Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group: Various governmental entities, mostly municipalities, counties, and states, routinely removed Native children from their families and put them up for adoption. In the Native resistance movements of the 1960s and 1970s, the demand to put a stop to the practice was codified in the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978. However, the burden of enforcing the legislation lay with Tribal Government, but the legislation provided no financial resources for Native governments to establish infrastructure to retrieve children from the adoption industry, in which Indian babies were high in demand. Despite these barriers to enforcement, the worst abuses had been curbed over the following three decades. But, on June 25, 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-4 ruling drafted by Justice Samuel Alito, used provisions of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) to say that a child, widely known as Baby Veronica, did not have to live with her biological Cherokee father. The high court’s decision paved the way for Matt and Melanie Capobianco, the adoptive parents, to ask the South Carolina Courts to have the child returned to them. The court gutted the purpose and intent of the Indian Child Welfare Act, missing the concept behind the ICWA, the protection of cultural resource and treasure that are Native children; it’s not about protecting so-called traditional or nuclear families. It’s about recognizing the prevalence of extended families and culture.xviii

So, why does the Genocide Convention matter? Native nations are still here and still vulnerable to genocidal policy. This isn’t just history that predates the 1948 Genocide Convention. But, the history is important and needs to be widely aired, included in public school texts and public service announcements. The Doctrine of Discovery is still law of the land. From the mid-fifteenth century to the mid-twentieth century, most of the non-European world was colonized under the Doctrine of Discovery, one of the first principles of international law Christian European monarchies promulgated to legitimize investigating, mapping, and claiming lands belonging to peoples outside Europe. It originated in a papal bull issued in 1455 that permitted the Portuguese monarchy to seize West Africa. Following Columbus’s infamous exploratory voyage in 1492, sponsored by the king and queen of the infant Spanish state, another papal bull extended similar permission to Spain. Disputes between the Portuguese and Spanish monarchies led to the papal-initiated Treaty of Tordesillas (1494), which, besides dividing the globe equally between the two Iberian empires, clarified that only non-Christian lands fell under the discovery doctrine.xix This doctrine on which all European states relied thus originated with the arbitrary and unilateral establishment of the Iberian monarchies’ exclusive rights under Christian canon law to colonize foreign peoples, and this right was later seized by other European monarchical colonizing projects. The French Republic used this legalistic instrument for its nineteenth- and twentieth-century settler colonialist projects, as did the newly independent United States when it continued the colonization of North America begun by the British.

In 1792, not long after the US founding, Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson claimed that the Doctrine of Discovery developed by European states was international law applicable to the new US government as well. In 1823 the US Supreme Court issued its decision in Johnson v. McIntosh. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Marshall held that the Doctrine of Discovery had been an established principle of European law and of English law in effect in Britain’s North American colonies and was also the law of the United States. The Court defined the exclusive property rights that a European country acquired by dint of discovery: “Discovery gave title to the government, by whose subjects, or by whose authority, it was made, against all other European governments, which title might be consummated by possession.” Therefore, European and Euro-American “discoverers” had gained real-property rights in the lands of Indigenous peoples by merely planting a flag. Indigenous rights were, in the Court’s words, “in no instance, entirely disregarded; but were necessarily, to a considerable extent, impaired.” The court further held that Indigenous “rights to complete sovereignty, as independent nations, were necessarily diminished.” Indigenous people could continue to live on the land, but title resided with the discovering power, the United States. The decision concluded that Native nations were “domestic, dependent nations.”

The Doctrine of Discovery is so taken for granted that it is rarely mentioned in historical or legal texts published in the Americas. The UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Peoples, which meets annually for two weeks, devoted its entire 2012 session to the doctrine.xx But few US citizens are aware of the precarity of the situation of Indigenous Peoples in the United States.

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nicko wrote:Edmund, you must know that everything produced by the Yanks was bigger,  faster and better than anything the Brits had.

Everthing except us studs that is Nicko.
Give any women a choice between a British lover or a Yank lover and we will win every time FACT!

blackie333 wrote:

nicko wrote:Edmund, you must know that everything produced by the Yanks was bigger,  faster and better than anything the Brits had.

Everthing except us studs that is Nicko.
Give any women a choice between a British lover or a Yank lover and we will win every time FACT!

Ah, but in them thar days of yore, matie, the Yanks had the nylons, chocolate and fistfuls of bucks and that gave 'em something of an advantage.

nicko wrote:It's no good Moley,    Quill will NEVER admit he was wrong.

Quill,   When American Bombers were returning from missions over Germany, some badly shot up,    do you know what they looked for?

Spitfires to escort them home,    You know what they called them?

Our LITTLE FRIENDS!

I know that, Nicko, but there's something refreshing in being able to have an argument without being called a far right fraggle, Nazi, fascist, BNP, EDL or any combination thereof.

Your right Moley, although Quills wrong he's nice with it!

Fred Moletrousers wrote:

Original Quill wrote:

I detect that you are conceding everything I've said.  I have no reason to disagree with you...it was a fabulous aircraft back in the day.  But it had outlived its usefulness by the time the US took over the war.

I'm not conceding anything at all; simply agreeing with you when, to use the words of Basil Fawlty, you were stating the bleedin' obvious such as that the Spitfire, like every aircraft built, was eventually overtaken and made redundant by advances in technology.

To attempt to compare it in terms of performance, range and technical advancement with the P51 Mustang was a case in point...the Spit was much older and the product of inter-war technology, and like the Hurricane was designed and built primarily for home defence in the knowledge that we would eventually go to war with Germany, and that the Luftwaffe was growing massively in strength, particularly in its bombing capability.

To say something outlived its usefulness, is one thing.  I'm saying the Spitfire had--to use modern parlance--a design flaw.  The elliptical wing was theoretically, on paper, the most perfect lift in aerodynamics.  But you have to interrupt airflow in order to have control...seamen had long recognized that in water, with the keel and rudder.  The Spitfire in its original design was subject to complete, catastrophic failure owing to 100% stall of the wing.  When the wing tips were thinned and twisted, the problem was corrected...but there went the 'perfect' aerodynamics.

Nor was the Spitfire the only design flaw uncovered during WWII.  The Lockheed P-38, also a beautiful airplane, had a high-speed compressibility stall in a steep dive, owing to controls being unable to grip airflow.  It didn't stop the use of the aircraft, and Richard Bong, the highest scoring of America's aces, flew the P-38.

Fred Moletrousers wrote:The Mustang's role was long range bomber protection, aided greatly by the introduction of drop tanks, and that was a job at which it excelled. The reason why it was technologically superior was that its designers were able to exploit everything learned about the performance of aircraft such as the Spitfire and the ME109 under actual combat conditions.

But that doesn't make the Spitfire anywhere near the equal of the P-51, in design or in quantum advancement in aerodynamics.  The parabolic wing was an ingenious development in wing efficiency, which took aviation from cave-dwelling to a modern lifestyle.  Drop tanks were negligible, as the P-51 got all the way home all right after they were dropped relatively early in the mission.

Nor did the Spitfire particularly advance the design of the parabolic wing.  The defect of the elliptical wing was holistic and had to do with lift (and stall), while the parabolic wing had to do with airflow characteristics and efficiency.

Fred Moletrousers wrote:But to claim that the Spit was a quaint,unaerodynamic design and that it "didn't work" was utter nonsense...otherwise I might have served my military time in a postwar Luftwaffe, learned to sing the Horst Wessel Lied, greet everyone by sticking out my right arm and yelling "heil fuhrer!" and drinking German lager instead of good strong English ale.

The Spitfire worked just fine after the modifications.  I admire your spirit and sense of humor...good for you.  The Spitfire was an object of love by the British because it represented the unflagging spirit and unfailing determination of the British nation at a time when things looked the darkest.  Of course anything associated with the Battle of Britain is going to be revered by the people.  I wouldn't deny you that.

nicko wrote:It's no good Moley,    Quill will NEVER admit he was wrong.

Quill,   When American Bombers were returning from missions over Germany, some badly shot up,    do you know what they looked for?

Spitfires to escort them home,    You know what they called them?

Our LITTLE FRIENDS!

So often, too little, too late.  

The American B-17 and B-24 bombers carried a contingent of 10-men.  Every bomber that went down was 10-men, and 10-bombers meant 100-men.  Because of these horrible numbers, the British would only fly at night missions; it was the American that willingly flew day and night raids...and paid the price.

Of course it's nice to see your friend's aircraft up there in protection after the danger is all over.  It couldn't be helped, but it still was too little, too late.  

Imagine the wonder and heartfelt gratitude the bombers felt when they saw American P-51's up there, waving and saying We're with you, all the way and back--and nobody's gonna fook with you, unless they go through us first!

There's a lot wrong with that statement mate, but i'v had enough of "my cock's bigger than your cock" so i'l let you get on with it!!!

nicko wrote:There's a lot wrong with that statement mate,    but i'v had enough of "my cock's bigger than your cock"  so i'l let you get on with it!!!

Loved that Nicko! x

nicko wrote:There's a lot wrong with that statement mate,    but i'v had enough of "my cock's bigger than your cock"  so i'l let you get on with it!!!

I don't like that sort of thing, either. That's why I stick the facts, just the facts.

One of the reasons why this thread has been so enjoyable is because it is chocked full of facts, and nothing in the way of the Hoorah Brits, hooray yanks! It's analytical all they way, and a very informative read.

Vive la France!

eddie wrote:Vive la France!

Although my degree is in 17th-century British thought, I've developed a passion for American history of late.  

And of course, I lived during WWII, and saw the airplanes land on my father's NAF base at Willow Grove.  I literally saw all that I'm talking about, shown to me by the mechanics and Navy/Marine pilots who had flown and fought in them.  I even met General Claire Chenault and saw the Flying Tiger P-40's, with their famous painted shark mouths, all parked in rows on the flight line.

I've also had the pleasure of meeting Admiral Chester Nimitz,  Commander in Chief, United States Pacific Fleet throughout WWII.  Lol...I've got the earliest selfie known, with him and me, taken on a Brownie camera.

So it's a thrill to get together and talk to people about those times.

nicko wrote:There's a lot wrong with that statement mate,    but i'v had enough of "my cock's bigger than your cock"  so i'l let you get on with it!!!

What you need to understand Penfold is the fact that Americans have no history, they're not taught history and they're not interested in history. Qualifications can be purchased for a packet of Ben and Harry, also anything they do know must connect with the $ which is probably the reason why Quill was found so wanting over lend lease and the Battle of Britain.

What these anti British colonists fail to understand is the fact that the Battle of Britain was all that stood between the world we know today and the jackboot of Nazi and imperialist Japan's tyranny.

Thankfully us Brits know what's in our hearts, we know the sacrifices made and we appreciate each and everyone of those hero's that saved us from the clutch of nazism.

We should make allowances for the fact that they will never ever comprehend our finest hour, it's simply beyond their comprehension.

I agree!

scrat wrote:

nicko wrote:There's a lot wrong with that statement mate,    but i'v had enough of "my cock's bigger than your cock"  so i'l let you get on with it!!!

What you need to understand Penfold is the fact that Americans have no history, they're not taught history and they're not interested in history. Qualifications can be purchased for a packet of Ben and Harry, also anything they do know must connect with the $ which is probably the reason why Quill was found so wanting over lend lease and the Battle of Britain.

What these anti British colonists fail to understand is the fact that the Battle of Britain was all that stood between the world we know today and the jackboot of Nazi and imperialist Japan's tyranny.

Thankfully us Brits know what's in our hearts, we know the sacrifices made and we appreciate each and everyone of those hero's that saved us from the clutch of nazism.

We should make allowances for the fact that they will never ever comprehend our finest hour, it's simply beyond their comprehension.

But, what is well within comprehension is, your on your own.  We're cutting your dinghy loose back there.

America has come full circle.  Realizing that Europe is just a gang of hangers-on and has nothing to offer, we are looking westward.  We don't need oil; we've got plenty.  We're bored with tours of the Eiffel Tower and the Tower Bridge.  Most of all, we don't need Europe's old world.  Even your problems are out of date.

The US had four Neutrality Acts, and Roosevelt broke them all.  Then we went on the warpath, fighting Churchill's communist-baiting battle in the Cold War.  Bush and Republicans were the last of the old school.  

Middle east and ISIS...psshaw.  It's half the globe away...none of our business.

Better hang on to those aircraft carriers y'all retired and turned into planters for the Hibiscus.  We'll be the ones in lawn chairs, with tall glasses of iced tea lookin' on and cheering.  You'll be the ones running up and down the field for 90-mins., and then losing in a kick-off.

scrat wrote:

nicko wrote:There's a lot wrong with that statement mate,    but i'v had enough of "my cock's bigger than your cock"  so i'l let you get on with it!!!

What you need to understand Penfold is the fact that Americans have no history, they're not taught history and they're not interested in history. Qualifications can be purchased for a packet of Ben and Harry, also anything they do know must connect with the $ which is probably the reason why Quill was found so wanting over lend lease and the Battle of Britain.

What these anti British colonists fail to understand is the fact that the Battle of Britain was all that stood between the world we know today and the jackboot of Nazi and imperialist Japan's tyranny.

Thankfully us Brits know what's in our hearts, we know the sacrifices made and we appreciate each and everyone of those hero's that saved us from the clutch of nazism.

We should make allowances for the fact that they will never ever comprehend our finest hour, it's simply beyond their comprehension.

No it wasn't, AGAIN ONLY REALLY dumb nationistic brits even suggest it. Defintily No one outside of Britians Agrees with such ridiculous propoganda, that is just Stupid.

how in what possible way did these air battles make any difference to the world?
whoopty fuck the UK got taken over, even though a whoel ground invasion woudl still have toccur unless you surrendered
AND literally made no differnece as you full nazis now anyway

Air battles never decide anything ever
they are irrelevant in the over scheme of things just like the battle of britian was irrelvant to the over all war effort and direction
YES you can keep telling your self that the Brit would have been beaten and kowtowed from a fraction of the bombs that ISIS is under..
since i agree that is probably true.
cause really air dominance means JACK SHIT, even today.


https://www.warhistoryonline.com/war-articles/top-10-reasons-why-hitler-lost-wwii.html/2

scrat wrote:

nicko wrote:There's a lot wrong with that statement mate,    but i'v had enough of "my cock's bigger than your cock"  so i'l let you get on with it!!!

What you need to understand Penfold is the fact that Americans have no history, they're not taught history and they're not interested in history. Qualifications can be purchased for a packet of Ben and Harry, also anything they do know must connect with the $ which is probably the reason why Quill was found so wanting over lend lease and the Battle of Britain.

What these anti British colonists fail to understand is the fact that the Battle of Britain was all that stood between the world we know today and the jackboot of Nazi and imperialist Japan's tyranny.

Thankfully us Brits know what's in our hearts, we know the sacrifices made and we appreciate each and everyone of those hero's that saved us from the clutch of nazism.

We should make allowances for the fact that they will never ever comprehend our finest hour, it's simply beyond their comprehension.

THIS post above highlights how little respect the modern Brit has for those that travelled across the globe to save them.
this is why the modern Brit has ZERO respect.
dumb propoganda fulled nationists that have huffed way too much of thier own shit.
you guys are so set on bignoting your small deeds that ypu only preformed to save yourself, that you insult those that did greater deeds with out the threat of lose or indeed by helping you risked losing their own homes.

I am sure many an people around the globe Read Shit like Scrat posts and think "I wish we had never helped such ungrateful fucks"


and the MOST disgusting thing is that People like tommy and major have essentially made the Swastika and the union jack the same thing in the eyes of the world

Veya wrote:I am sure many an people around the globe Read Shit like Scrat posts and think "I wish we had never helped such ungrateful fucks"

And with Brexit, their arrogance has cost them the only, and last friends they have.  The Commonwealth ain't there. We ain't there. And now they turn their back on Europe.

Talk about a perfect Greek tragedy...their single flaw is what leads to their downfall.

The bitterness from the colonials in this thread is extraordinary.

Original Quill wrote:

scrat wrote:
What you need to understand Penfold is the fact that Americans have no history, they're not taught history and they're not interested in history. Qualifications can be purchased for a packet of Ben and Harry, also anything they do know must connect with the $ which is probably the reason why Quill was found so wanting over lend lease and the Battle of Britain.

What these anti British colonists fail to understand is the fact that the Battle of Britain was all that stood between the world we know today and the jackboot of Nazi and imperialist Japan's tyranny.

Thankfully us Brits know what's in our hearts, we know the sacrifices made and we appreciate each and everyone of those hero's that saved us from the clutch of nazism.

We should make allowances for the fact that they will never ever comprehend our finest hour, it's simply beyond their comprehension.

But, what is well within comprehension is, your on your own.  We're cutting your dinghy loose back there.

America has come full circle.  Realizing that Europe is just a gang of hangers-on and has nothing to offer, we are looking westward.  We don't need oil; we've got plenty.  We're bored with tours of the Eiffel Tower and the Tower Bridge.  Most of all, we don't need Europe's old world.  Even your problems are out of date.

The US had four Neutrality Acts, and Roosevelt broke them all.  Then we went on the warpath, fighting Churchill's communist-baiting battle in the Cold War.  Bush and Republicans were the last of the old school.  

Middle east and ISIS...psshaw.  It's half the globe away...none of our business.

Better hang on to those aircraft carriers y'all retired and turned into planters for the Hibiscus.  We'll be the ones in lawn chairs, with tall glasses of iced tea lookin' on and cheering.  You'll be the ones running up and down the field for 90-mins., and then losing in a kick-off.

Think on,,,,, http://www.usdebtclock.org/

veya_victaous wrote:

scrat wrote:
What you need to understand Penfold is the fact that Americans have no history, they're not taught history and they're not interested in history. Qualifications can be purchased for a packet of Ben and Harry, also anything they do know must connect with the $ which is probably the reason why Quill was found so wanting over lend lease and the Battle of Britain.

What these anti British colonists fail to understand is the fact that the Battle of Britain was all that stood between the world we know today and the jackboot of Nazi and imperialist Japan's tyranny.

Thankfully us Brits know what's in our hearts, we know the sacrifices made and we appreciate each and everyone of those hero's that saved us from the clutch of nazism.

We should make allowances for the fact that they will never ever comprehend our finest hour, it's simply beyond their comprehension.

No it wasn't, AGAIN ONLY REALLY dumb nationistic brits even suggest it. Defintily No one outside of Britians Agrees with such ridiculous propoganda, that is just Stupid.

how in what possible way did these air battles make any difference to the world?
whoopty fuck the UK got taken over, even though a whoel ground invasion woudl still have toccur unless you surrendered      
AND literally made no differnece as you full nazis now anyway

Air battles never decide anything ever
they are irrelevant in the over scheme of things just like the battle of britian was irrelvant to the over all war effort and direction
YES you can keep telling your self that the Brit would have been beaten and kowtowed from a fraction of the bombs that ISIS is under..
since i agree that is probably true.        
cause really air dominance means JACK SHIT, even today.


https://www.warhistoryonline.com/war-articles/top-10-reasons-why-hitler-lost-wwii.html/2

Calm your sad, confused and rather pathetic being young man and contemplate this,,,,,,

Quill, you and I are not to to agree on the respective merits of the Spitfire and the Mustang for all sorts of reasons, one of which is that you are not comparing like with like because of the huge differences in both vintage and mission purpose.

Or, indeed, that your aeronautical scientists and engineers were better than ours.

While you personally may well have lived on an air base with your father, I served on one - several in fact -and although my flying aspirations sadly came to naught I do at least have a fair few hours as a cadet trainee under my belt in Chipmunks, Ansons and - greatest fun of all- Tiger Moths.

So, since this thread now appears to be a case of hostilities resumed, I will bow out with three final points:

William Dunn (US fighter ace who flew Spitfires, P-51s, Hurricanes, and P-47s): "Now, if I had to make the choice of one fighter aircraft above all the others - one that I'd rather have tied to the seat of my pants in any tactical situation - it would be, without any doubt, the world's greatest propeller driven flying machine - the magnificent and immortal Spitfire."


And...if your brilliant aeronautical scientists and engineers were so much better, more advanced and more forward-thinking than our stone age British aeronautical scientists and engineers, how come we had the Gloster G40 powered by a British-invented jet engine up in the air at least 18 month before Bell's P-59A Airacomet got its wheels off the ground? And that at a time when Britain's factories, airfields, homes and people were being bombed into near oblivion while you lot were still enjoying hunting, fishing, surfing and mom's apple pie.

Oh, and for good measure, how come De Havilland beat Boeing into the jet airliner age?

NUFF SED!

Original Quill wrote:

nicko wrote:It's no good Moley,    Quill will NEVER admit he was wrong.

Quill,   When American Bombers were returning from missions over Germany, some badly shot up,    do you know what they looked for?

Spitfires to escort them home,    You know what they called them?

Our LITTLE FRIENDS!

So often, too little, too late.  

The American B-17 and B-24 bombers carried a contingent of 10-men.  Every bomber that went down was 10-men, and 10-bombers meant 100-men.  Because of these horrible numbers, the British would only fly at night missions; it was the American that willingly flew day and night raids...and paid the price.

Of course it's nice to see your friend's aircraft up there in protection after the danger is all over.  It couldn't be helped, but it still was too little, too late.  

Imagine the wonder and heartfelt gratitude the bombers felt when they saw American P-51's up there, waving and saying We're with you, all the way and back--and nobody's gonna fook with you, unless they go through us first!

the spit was a short range fighter and designed as such. the mustang was designed as a long range fighter escort.
The spit fought in anger far longer than the mustang who like the americans was a johnny come lately to the war.
most pilots would agree the spit was the better plane.

the hurricane was the one that did the most damage to the german bombers

Fred Moletrousers wrote:Quill, you and I are not to to agree on the respective merits of the Spitfire and the Mustang for all sorts of reasons, one of which is that you are not comparing like with like because of the huge differences in both vintage and mission purpose.

Absolutely.  My point was not to compare the hardware, but that Americans approach intellectual problems on a much higher level than do Europeans.  The P-51, and it's purpose in WWII, was but an example.

Fred Moletrousers wrote:Or, indeed, that your aeronautical scientists and engineers were better than ours.

Again, I agree.  The British came up with the brillian Merlin engine, with its two-stage supercharger, while the Americans came up with the parabolic wing.  But the idea to trade out the Allison engine with the Merlin was North American Aviation's idea.  There was no American pride involved, as Europeans so often demonstrate over their toys, but a higher-level approach to problem-solving.

Fred Moletrousers wrote:While you personally may well have lived on an air base with your father, I served on one - several in fact -and although my flying aspirations sadly came to naught I do at least have a fair few hours as a cadet trainee under my belt in Chipmunks, Ansons and - greatest fun of all-  Tiger Moths.

So, since this thread now appears to be a case of hostilities resumed, I will bow out with three final points:

William Dunn (US fighter ace who flew Spitfires, P-51s, Hurricanes, and P-47s): "Now, if I had to make the choice of one fighter aircraft above all the others - one that I'd rather have tied to the seat of my pants in any tactical situation - it would be, without any doubt, the world's greatest propeller driven flying machine - the magnificent and immortal Spitfire."


And...if your brilliant aeronautical scientists and engineers were so much better, more advanced and more forward-thinking than our stone age  British aeronautical scientists and engineers, how come we had the Gloster G40 powered by a British-invented jet engine up in the air at least 18 month before Bell's P-59A Airacomet got its wheels off the ground? And that at a time when Britain's factories, airfields, homes and people were being bombed into near oblivion while you lot were still enjoying hunting, fishing, surfing and mom's apple pie.

Oh, and for good measure, how come De Havilland beat Boeing into the jet airliner age?

Well, I salute your service.  I'm sure that flying the Spitfire was an amazing moment for you. I'm sorry that circumstances didn't go better for you that you might have completed your training and went on.

Yes, we seem to have gone a bit off course with this thread.  But that's good as it is fun to relive the old debates and remember the facts and history.

But that was not my original point.  I brought up the P-51, not as a piece of hardware, but as a piece of a puzzle that fit into a bigger picture.  Let's face it, the Allied position in 1940 was a mess.  Now, Americans we see are highly adept organizers--what Susan K. Langer called "to place ,,, phenomena within the order of things."  Rogawsky, A.S., "A Systems Theory Approach to the Understanding of Emotions," Journal of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis (1987).  The Americans were able to impose a sense of order on war efforts.  That's why, as I mentioned, Dwight D. Eisenhower was made Supreme Allied Commander.  He was a systems man par excellence.

If you take exception to anything, you might at least defend Europe and against my contention about it's dated and parochial thinking.  What I have been saying is that Europe is stuck in a 16th-century frame-of-mind, where love of the artifact predominates.  But here you and your fellow Englishmen have ended up proving my point by turning this into a discussion about artifacts: notably the Spitfire.

That said, it has certainly been enjoyable reliving some of the discussions about the history of warfare and tactics, as well as the technical details in the evolution of flight.

The Devil, You Know wrote:

Original Quill wrote:

So often, too little, too late.  

The American B-17 and B-24 bombers carried a contingent of 10-men.  Every bomber that went down was 10-men, and 10-bombers meant 100-men.  Because of these horrible numbers, the British would only fly at night missions; it was the American that willingly flew day and night raids...and paid the price.

Of course it's nice to see your friend's aircraft up there in protection after the danger is all over.  It couldn't be helped, but it still was too little, too late.  

Imagine the wonder and heartfelt gratitude the bombers felt when they saw American P-51's up there, waving and saying We're with you, all the way and back--and nobody's gonna fook with you, unless they go through us first!

the spit was a short range fighter and designed as such. the mustang was designed as a long range fighter escort.

Yes, we've been talking about that, Dean.  Fred, in particular, is most knowledgeable about the Spitfire.  It's really difficult to compare the two air frames because the Spitfire was designed in 1920.  The P-51 came much later, when aerodynamics were much better understood.  Even terms like short- and long-range fighters came after-the-fact, as the parabolic wing was part of a natural evolution of understanding.  They weren't "designed as such", so much as the innovations came along and were put to good use.

Dean wrote:The spit fought in anger far longer than the mustang who like the americans was a johnny come lately to the war.
most pilots would agree the spit was the better plane.

the hurricane was the one that did the most damage to the german bombers

But, the P-51 met the task much better.  It was just what was needed...a long range accompaniment for the Allied bombing missions.  And those bombing missions are what won the war.

But you see what we are now talking about?  The idea of a systems approach to the task was my original thought.  My original point was not to compare dick sizes, but to compare brain sizes.  American organization and problem-solving was what did it.

Original Quill wrote:

scrat wrote:
What you need to understand Penfold is the fact that Americans have no history, they're not taught history and they're not interested in history. Qualifications can be purchased for a packet of Ben and Harry, also anything they do know must connect with the $ which is probably the reason why Quill was found so wanting over lend lease and the Battle of Britain.

What these anti British colonists fail to understand is the fact that the Battle of Britain was all that stood between the world we know today and the jackboot of Nazi and imperialist Japan's tyranny.

Thankfully us Brits know what's in our hearts, we know the sacrifices made and we appreciate each and everyone of those hero's that saved us from the clutch of nazism.

We should make allowances for the fact that they will never ever comprehend our finest hour, it's simply beyond their comprehension.

But, what is well within comprehension is, your on your own.  We're cutting your dinghy loose back there.

America has come full circle.  Realizing that Europe is just a gang of hangers-on and has nothing to offer, we are looking westward.  We don't need oil; we've got plenty.  We're bored with tours of the Eiffel Tower and the Tower Bridge.  Most of all, we don't need Europe's old world.  Even your problems are out of date.

The US had four Neutrality Acts, and Roosevelt broke them all.  Then we went on the warpath, fighting Churchill's communist-baiting battle in the Cold War.  Bush and Republicans were the last of the old school.  

Middle east and ISIS...psshaw.  It's half the globe away...none of our business.

Better hang on to those aircraft carriers y'all retired and turned into planters for the Hibiscus.  We'll be the ones in lawn chairs, with tall glasses of iced tea lookin' on and cheering.  You'll be the ones running up and down the field for 90-mins., and then losing in a kick-off.

Not if Trump gets in, you won't!

HoratioTarr wrote:

veya_victaous wrote:

Because you try and rewrite history to blame others and don't accept any blame yourself and The romans were throughly Fucked up at the end and England so far has escaped any sort of justice and refuses to even acknowledge the reparations is Owes others if it is ever to be considered civil.

like blackie blaming the people in Chains with no vote or choice
Over the Englishmen that made a fortune raping the new world.
even When the Aussies were free'd from the English Chains and Lashes, english lords fought tooth and nail to stop the aussie giving the Aboriginal back the land the English men had stole.

Reality is Until either England IS Rubble like Rome or Actually displays some civility and remorse and starts paying some reparations for it horrendus crimes against humanity, yes it deserves to be blamed and hated by any and every good peoples. it is rigth that we teach the Evil that was the British empire so We can Ensure such and evil is never allowed to rise again.

Without the Dutch and British there would be no Australia, as you know it now.  South America would not be the place it is today if not for the Spanish and Portuguese.   Just as Europe and Britain would not be the place it is now had the Romans not conquered us.    And then we have the Ottoman Empire, who conquered and occupied territories spanning 3 continents.  

Just who exactly do you think should be 'paid' for crimes that took place in the 1500s?   And how exactly?  

You are right as obviously we personally are probably far better off now because of the Roman invasion but nowadays it's different HT.
Technology is available the world over for almost everyone so almost everyone can learn about what's going on in their own part of the world
and if they dont like it do something about it but not in remote isolated tribes living in the remotest jungles in the world who dont want to learn our way of life.
They should just be left alone in my opinion.

Original Quill wrote:

Fred Moletrousers wrote:Quill, you and I are not to to agree on the respective merits of the Spitfire and the Mustang for all sorts of reasons, one of which is that you are not comparing like with like because of the huge differences in both vintage and mission purpose.

Absolutely.  My point was not to compare the hardware, but that Americans approach intellectual problems on a much higher level than do Europeans.  The P-51, and it's purpose in WWII, was but an example.

Fred Moletrousers wrote:Or, indeed, that your aeronautical scientists and engineers were better than ours.

Again, I agree.  The British came up with the brillian Merlin engine, with its two-stage supercharger, while the Americans came up with the parabolic wing.  But the idea to trade out the Allison engine with the Merlin was North American Aviation's idea.  There was no American pride involved, as Europeans so often demonstrate over their toys, but a higher-level approach to problem-solving.

Fred Moletrousers wrote:While you personally may well have lived on an air base with your father, I served on one - several in fact -and although my flying aspirations sadly came to naught I do at least have a fair few hours as a cadet trainee under my belt in Chipmunks, Ansons and - greatest fun of all-  Tiger Moths.

So, since this thread now appears to be a case of hostilities resumed, I will bow out with three final points:

William Dunn (US fighter ace who flew Spitfires, P-51s, Hurricanes, and P-47s): "Now, if I had to make the choice of one fighter aircraft above all the others - one that I'd rather have tied to the seat of my pants in any tactical situation - it would be, without any doubt, the world's greatest propeller driven flying machine - the magnificent and immortal Spitfire."


And...if your brilliant aeronautical scientists and engineers were so much better, more advanced and more forward-thinking than our stone age  British aeronautical scientists and engineers, how come we had the Gloster G40 powered by a British-invented jet engine up in the air at least 18 month before Bell's P-59A Airacomet got its wheels off the ground? And that at a time when Britain's factories, airfields, homes and people were being bombed into near oblivion while you lot were still enjoying hunting, fishing, surfing and mom's apple pie.

Oh, and for good measure, how come De Havilland beat Boeing into the jet airliner age?

Well, I salute your service.  I'm sure that flying the Spitfire was an amazing moment for you.  I'm sorry that circumstances didn't go better for you that you might have completed your training and went on.

Yes, we seem to have gone a bit off course with this thread.  But that's good as it is fun to relive the old debates and remember the facts and history.

But that was not my original point.  I brought up the P-51, not as a piece of hardware, but as a piece of a puzzle that fit into a bigger picture.  Let's face it, the Allied position in 1940 was a mess.  Now, Americans we see are highly adept organizers--what Susan K. Langer called "to place ,,, phenomena within the order of things."  Rogawsky, A.S., "A Systems Theory Approach to the Understanding of Emotions," Journal of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis (1987).  The Americans were able to impose a sense of order on war efforts.  That's why, as I mentioned, Dwight D. Eisenhower was made Supreme Allied Commander.  He was a systems man par excellence.

If you take exception to anything, you might at least defend Europe and against my contention about it's dated and parochial thinking.  What I have been saying is that Europe is stuck in a 16th-century frame-of-mind, where love of the artifact predominates.  But here you and your fellow Englishmen have ended up proving my point by turning this into a discussion about artifacts: notably the Spitfire.

That said, it has certainly been enjoyable reliving some of the discussions about the history of warfare and tactics, as well as the technical details in the evolution of flight.

Because I didn't want to embarrass you by pointing out that it was a patently flawed contention anyway...without all this dated and parochial thinking and a 16th century frame of mind you would not have been able to draw on and exploit all those European skills, ingenuity, inventiveness, research and development and initial investment that gave you the the motor car, the motor cycle, the jet engine, the military hovercraft, the helicopter, the computer, the world wide web, the A-bomb, your space programme including your first man on the moon and, come to think of it, the railways and locomotives that enabled you to open up the West.

Some "dated and parochial thinking." Some 16th century frame of mind."

Ps. I seem to recall that you were the first one to mention the Spitfire, though what the hell that had to do with genocide of native Americans I fail to comprehend. Surely you're not going to blame our chaps for that, are you?

Well, I certainly understand the evolution of ides in history.  But there is also the catastrophic theory of change. Immigration, on which the US was built, brings new blood, and more combinations.  You Europeans are highly insular and in-bred, possibly leading to a kind of evolutionary stall, be it conventional or organic.

I just think America has a lot more going for it.  I mean...just look around.

Original Quill wrote:Well, I certainly understand the evolution of ides in history.  But there is also the catastrophic theory of change.  Immigration, on which the US was built, brings new blood, and more combinations.  You Europeans are highly insular and in-bred, possibly leading to a kind of evolutionary stall, be it conventional or organic.

I just think America has a lot more going for it.  I mean...just look around.

I do look around OQ and I know how many doctors and nurses are not British born but go through the legal way to become accepted and help us all but the illegals outnumber them by the hundreds
and ruin the reputatation of them all.

Original Quill wrote:Well, I certainly understand the evolution of ides in history.  But there is also the catastrophic theory of change.  Immigration, on which the US was built, brings new blood, and more combinations.  You Europeans are highly insular and in-bred, possibly leading to a kind of evolutionary stall, be it conventional or organic.

I just think America has a lot more going for it.  I mean...just look around.

I accept what you say on immigration, but so far as the UK is concerned could you just, please, look at the size of our landmass compared to yours; our available resources such as food production, water, power, healthcare, education and infrastructure compared to yours; our national wealth and potential compared to yours...and then take a somewhat more charitable view of our very real problems.

Fred Moletrousers wrote:

Original Quill wrote:Well, I certainly understand the evolution of ides in history.  But there is also the catastrophic theory of change.  Immigration, on which the US was built, brings new blood, and more combinations.  You Europeans are highly insular and in-bred, possibly leading to a kind of evolutionary stall, be it conventional or organic.

I just think America has a lot more going for it.  I mean...just look around.

I accept what you say on immigration, but so far as the UK is concerned could you just, please, look at the size of our landmass compared to yours; our available resources such as food production, water, power, healthcare, education and infrastructure compared to yours; our national wealth and potential compared to yours...and then take a somewhat more charitable view of our very real problems.

I do appreciate that.  I'm posing (not advocating) that immigration created a catastrophic change in human social, and perhaps organic make-up in the human animal.  A good book in this regard is Danial J. Borstin, The Discovers.  I kept thinking when I first read that book, how different the world was after 1492.  Borstin stresses the intellectual changes, but it was also the first time that massive cross-breeding took place in the New World.  Even within Europe, people had a strong proclivity to keep to their own kind...and they still do.  It's quite possible that a quantum leap in terms of organic processes, took place.

In any event, I'm not thinking of the vast herding and farming space that the US had, although that had ideological consequences as well (the endless frontier thesis).  There may have been practical reasons, but something different occurred in the thought processes of the new world man.  Maybe it was the loneliness, or the innate sense of self-preservation.  It became his habit to think in terms of systems, and to put diverse things together.  He became proficient in organization and making do with eclectic means.  

And of course, look at the vast industrial and technological base that arose here.  More than size has to have accounted for that.

If anyone wants to compare the Mustang with the Spitfire just ask the RAF. Here's what they say...



Looks like they are calling it a draw.

This is a really brilliant site that gives you all the information you will need to look up on WWII aircraft performace. Pilot reports and mission objectives and the like are all there.

http://wwiiaircraftperformance.org/

Appreciate your input, as always Irn.  I happen to agree with the Tactical Trials Report, save that it is of the British version, the Mustang Mark III.  Let's see what one pilot said:

UBISOFT wrote:The Mustang Mark III is the British designation for the P-51B/C. They rolled off the same production line. In-game the Mustang Mark III is boosted to British specifications for a late war Mustang. At +25lbs engine boost on the Merlin 266 (Packard built license version of the Rolls Royce Merlin 66 in the Spitfire VIII and IX) the Mustang Mark III is one of the fastest prop fighters at any altitude in the game.

The Mark III and the boost are not synonymous in real life, however, they are in the game.

The Mustang Mark II is roughly analogous with a P-51A and the Mark III is a P-51B/C with the P-51D being a Mark IV. The Mark I don't think has an official USAAF match.
http://forums.ubi.com/showthread.php/441490-Difference-between-Mustang-III-and-P-51-Forums

The P-51 I was referring to was the P-51D, which was the equivalent to the Mark IV...and the aircraft sent into combat.

Again, I want to reiterate that my point was never to compare the Spitfire with the P-51...that would be unfair because the Spitfire was a 20-year older aircraft.  My point was to use the example of the P-51D as an example of organization. Merlin engine, parabolic wing...British and American engineering working together.  The issue wasn't a bigger dick, but a bigger brain.

Original Quill wrote:Appreciate your input, as always Irn.  I happen to agree with the Tactical Trials Report, save that it is of the British version, the Mustang Mark III.  Let's see what one pilot said:

UBISOFT wrote:The Mustang Mark III is the British designation for the P-51B/C. They rolled off the same production line. In-game the Mustang Mark III is boosted to British specifications for a late war Mustang. At +25lbs engine boost on the Merlin 266 (Packard built license version of the Rolls Royce Merlin 66 in the Spitfire VIII and IX) the Mustang Mark III is one of the fastest prop fighters at any altitude in the game.

The Mark III and the boost are not synonymous in real life, however, they are in the game.

The Mustang Mark II is roughly analogous with a P-51A and the Mark III is a P-51B/C with the P-51D being a Mark IV. The Mark I don't think has an official USAAF match.
http://forums.ubi.com/showthread.php/441490-Difference-between-Mustang-III-and-P-51-Forums

The P-51 I was referring to was the P-51D, which was the equivalent to the Mark IV...and the aircraft sent into combat.

Again, I want to reiterate that my point was never to compare the Spitfire with the P-51...that would be unfair because the Spitfire was a 20-year older aircraft.  My point was to use the example of the P-51D as an example of organization.  Merlin engine, parabolic wing...British and American engineering working together.  The issue wasn't a bigger dick, but a bigger brain.

We Brits gave birth to Barnes Wallace and the Hurricane Bomber and the Spitfire which decimated the Germans Fockers.
When pushed we come up with some of the greatest inventions ever in time of need.

blackie333 wrote:

Original Quill wrote:Appreciate your input, as always Irn.  I happen to agree with the Tactical Trials Report, save that it is of the British version, the Mustang Mark III.  Let's see what one pilot said:



The P-51 I was referring to was the P-51D, which was the equivalent to the Mark IV...and the aircraft sent into combat.

Again, I want to reiterate that my point was never to compare the Spitfire with the P-51...that would be unfair because the Spitfire was a 20-year older aircraft.  My point was to use the example of the P-51D as an example of organization.  Merlin engine, parabolic wing...British and American engineering working together.  The issue wasn't a bigger dick, but a bigger brain.

We Brits gave birth to Barnes Wallace and the Hurricane Bomber and the Spitfire which decimated the Germans Fockers.
When pushed we come up with some of the greatest inventions ever in time of need.

Great inventions, as individual artifacts. But no systematic plan or overview. The world has outgrown Europe and European thinking. We don't need to excel at toys; we need to excel at plans.