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Had the privilege to meet Günther Rall in an event arranged at Finnish Air force museum some years ago.As we all know he flew the Bf109 all his career and was pretty succesfull in it too shooting down some 275 aircraft, actually 276 as the P47D he damaged ditched later in France. But that is another story.
So of course we kept asking him politely about tactics and performances. As of best tactic against planes he said with a laugh: Shoot it down! Can imagine it as Rall was one of the marksmen in Luftwaffe, shooting down fighter planes from 400m which is really far for the time.
Ok, about the Mustang. We asked which plane he regarded the best of allied fighters. He said without hesitation: Mustang. His points were clear on the plane: speed, range, cockpit ergonomy, controls, visibility. He did not say it was a turn fighter or anything, but as a pilot he valued the characteristics above. B109 lacked some of that but he said he could fly it to the limits as he "had been living inside it for 5 years".
Combine that with pilots that have a full training behind and results are good. This is what happened in Europe as well. USAAF had the air supremacy and according to Rall there was not much they could do but sit and watch the P51's, P38's and P47's prowl the skies. The odds were too much and new young pilots died in their first or second flight.
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