Berliner - Surviving Fighter Aircraft of World War Two: Fighters: A Globel Guide to Location and Types

A million and a half aircraft have been built since the Wright Brothers presented the world with their 1903 Flyer that achieved what earlier, so-called airplanes did not: FLIGHT! Most have been airplanes (fixed-wing, powered, heavier-than-air, man-carrying), but many others were seaplanes, gliders, helicopters and lighter-than-air blimps and dirigibles.

Almost half of all those 1,500,000 aircraft were built for World War Two: 750,000 fighters, bombers, transports, trainers, scouts, gliders and helicopters. Most were built in the United States, Great Britain, France, the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, Finland, Poland, Germany, Japan, Italy, and Spain.

The total includes older aircraft that remained in military service at the start of World War Two, all those built during and for the war, and all those flown prior to V-J Day on 15 August 1945, even if only in the form of a single prototype that did not get into production before the war ended.

For the purpose of this book, a basic type is exemplified by the P-51 Mustang, while the P-51A and P-51B are considered sub-types. Of more than 500 basic types built as production designs or unsuccessful prototypes, 60 per cent still exist in at least one example and most of them have been restored to near-new (sometimes better than new) condition. Sadly, the remaining 40 per cent seem to have disappeared for good, though hardly any of those can be considered major types. And there is still the remote chance that one or more of them may be discovered in a remote barn or some vast scrap yard.

The total of individual surviving World War Two aircraft is well over four thousand. Easily the most popular type is the North American AT-6/SNJ/Harvard advanced trainer, with almost 1,300 known to exist in some recognizable condition. A significant proportion are not only flyable, but regularly flown as warbirds. The most common sub-types are the AT-6G with 290 survivors, the AT-6D with 270, and the SNJ-4 with 160.

Of the fighters, there are close to 1,000 known, with the P-51 the most popular, at 340 examples, its P-51D sub-type accounting for 275. There are about 220 Spitfires, of which the Mk.IX accounts for 60 and the Mk.XVI, 40.

When completed, this three-volume series will cover about 330 basic types and 500 basic and sub-types combined. Roughly half of them are the only known example to survive for 65 years.

This first volume covers fighters (also known in the US as pursuits). As World War Two was becoming inevitable, most air forces were still equipped with squadrons of open-cockpit pursuit biplanes having fixed landing gears and piston engines, and at least partially covered with doped fabric. Few had top speeds exceeding 250mph. When the war ended, the main air powers the United States, Great Britain, Germany were building scientifically-designed airplanes powered by turbojet engines that could easily top 500mph and sometimes approach 600mph.

The second volume will concentrate on bombers, with about 80 basic types known to exist. The final volume will show all the other types, with at least 150 transports, trainers, rotary-wing, gliders, seaplanes, scout and reconnaissance, research and record-setting and miscellaneous craft.

In all three volumes the author has been faced with the problem of dealing with multi-purpose airplanes such as fighter-bombers, scout-bombers, liaison/utility planes and training gliders. Rather than list them in both categories, he has chosen to list each by its primary function, with reference to the other(s). Even so, some designs simply refuse to be categorized, creating a need for a miscellaneous category.