Talk:List of aircraft of World War II

WHERE

IS THE WESTLAND WHIRLWIND, A BIRITISH TWIN ENGINED FIGHTER? 77.99.221.223 (talk) 10:33, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

Just Added it to Fighter list. --XA-32 (talk) 19:35, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

yes it is99.135.8.154 (talk) 21:06, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Where's the Black Widow?

Y'know, this plane... P-61_Black_Widow

Just added a link in Fighters. Sbrawner 20:17, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Junkers Ju-52

The Junkers Ju 52 seems to be missing --77.75.167.238 (talk) 11:25, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

LOL, and flag inconsistency

The wiki project aviation box has an error (obviously), it's hilarious because it lists the error as the class of page this talk page is for. On another note, why do some aircraft listed show flags, while others don't? It's a lot easier to identify what nations they belonged to by just looking at the flag than actually looking for the country name.Scotty Zebulon (talk) 22:25, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Cleanup

Today I made some minor changes to the article I'm sure I missed some but got what I saw. Superniper100 (talk) 13:30, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Really amazing improvement guys, just saying thanks.

You guys have really done an amazing job on this page recently, adding huge amounts of the new fighter. I just want to say thank you to whoever did this as it helps me greatly in my passion for world war two aircraft. --82.112.134.49 (talk) 15:51, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! I found a severely underpopulated list and decided to expand it as I figured it would be a useful starting place - there are still some additions to go (Manchuria, China, Indochine, France, etc) plus converting flags into names, and refs for the redlinks and obscure types. I honestly never thought there were so many biplanes used - nor how many types were used of all types.NiD.29 (talk) 19:24, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Ansaldo A.120

The main article for the Ansaldo A.120 describes this aircraft as a monoplane, but it is under the biplanes section on this page. I'm not familiar with this aircraft, so I don't want to change it either way. --MDCore (talk) 07:58, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks - fixed - it was in fact a parasol monoplane - a scaled up Dewoitine D.1 fighter (built by Ansaldo as the AC.2), with 2 seatsNiD.29 (talk) 10:40, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

Inclusion of Indian Airforce / Royal Indian Airforce

The Indian Airforce existed as a separate entity from before the war with its own procurement, logistics, staff, etc.

The previous notes on some aircraft claim that Indian airmen along with polish, Czech and Yugoslav airmen operated as part of the RAF. This statement is untrue as the circumstances are completely different.

To Clarify further,

The polish and Czech airforces ceased to exist as a separate entity after the German conquest of their countries. Their airmen who escaped to the UK were organized into squadrons which functioned as part of the RAF. for example the No. 303 Polish Fighter Squadron.

While there were Indian airmen who served directly with the RAF (including some who fought in the Battle of Brittan) , they operated within the squadrons of the RAF's Fighter, Bomber or Coastal Commands. (similar to the scores of Australian, new New Zealand or Canadian airmen who served directly in the RAF). However, the bulk of the Indian airmen who served in WWII operated as a part of the IAF which like other commonwealth airforces existed as a separate entity. Although the IAF fell under the overall command of the RAF, other commonwealth airforces such as the RAAF and RCAF, etc also did.

furthermore, the IAF operated in both the major theaters of North Africa and China-Burma-India against Axis forces and played a significant part in the Burma Operations.

To sum up, my inclusion of the IAF in the list of users is justified as 1) IAF was a seperate entity from the RAF, 2) The IAF saw significant action during the war. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pvpoodle (talk • contribs) 16:00, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

If the aircraft were owned by the Indian government then they should be included, however, the nationality of the crew or unit does not determine the nationality of the aircraft and this page is not about who did what or any of that nationalistic nonsense, but about the aircraft that were used. If this develops into a problem then the user column will need to be deleted.

A great many aircraft were flown by Canadians, Poles, etc, however, these aircraft were never the property of their respective governments - they were strictly owned and operated by the British government and should only be listed as such. Unlike the listings of aircraft owned by various governments, such as List of aircraft of Canada's air forces - no meaningful tally can be made of aircraft operated by Canadian overseas units that were supplied by the British as aircraft were transferred back and forth continually with no distinction that somehow an RCAF heavy bomber Squadron was different than a similar RAF unit. This cannot be said of squadrons supplied with aircraft provided by the Canadian government - transfers from the RAF to the RCAF proper resulted in a different type of paperwork that is more readily trackable (and meaningful) than movements between units. If you had a complete serial list of every aircraft operated by any such unit supplied by the RAF, you might be able to say - the RCAF overseas operated x Typhoons or y Wellingtons but that number would be meaningless - some of those aircraft were likely never used, some lost on operations, some transferred back for refurbishment to go to other units, which may or may not have been with units of the same nominal nationality. The aircraft of the Eagle squadrons are never considered to be American and do not get included on lists of American aircraft (despite being manned by Americans), so why should similar aircraft with units of other nationalities be given a special treatment?

Kindly provide a reference that lists what the Indian Air Force owned (or mentions that such and such a type was on the strength of the IAF during that period), and they will be included.NiD.29 (talk) 06:49, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

operators if different than the country of origin.

The intention with this column is to not list types whose only operator in the country of origin (since that duplicates the origin column and would add excessively to the page size), but to show the operators of types when there is more than one operator (when none are listed, only the country of origin operated the type). When more than one country, including the country of origin, operated a type, the country of origin still needs to be included because there are some types that were not being used by their country of origin, despite being used by others, such as the Grumman FF/Goblin which had been withdrawn by the US but was still operated by Canada. There are a number of such types (all obsolete) that continued to be used elsewhere after they were no longer saw use at home.NiD.29 (talk) 06:14, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Should a 'number built' column be added?

I think that it will be an important addition, which is useful to identify service aircraft from prototypes or aircraft which were only produced in no significant numbers. And it will also be useful to compare aircraft production by country. I need authorization for adding this. Thanks. Nytsuga (talk) 23:40, 19 June 2016 (UTC)

Not sure that number built will help as production may have been before/during/after the war so may not be relevant. If they were prototypes or low production then a note would be better although if they were not actually operational then perhaps they should not be on this list. MilborneOne (talk) 19:22, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

I really like to know number built to get an impression of how important they are. I have added the column into the heavy bombers. Easy to get data off the bomber's wiki page. Does it look OK? I think there is plenty of space for more columns and this seems to be the best use of the space to me. What do you think? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Littlebluenick (talk • contribs) 21:23, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

External links modified

Hello, fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 2 external links on List of aircraft of World War II. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

• Added archive https://archive.is/20130114071453/http://slovakaf.kpmzilina.sk/lietadla/zobor/zobor.sk.htm to http://slovakaf.kpmzilina.sk/lietadla/zobor/zobor.sk.htm
• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20111123214154/http://www.worldairforces.com/index.html to http://www.worldairforces.com/index.html

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 18 January 2022).

• If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
• If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 10:42, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

Prototypes

The list has a large number of prototypes and the like which didn't actually enter service or were involved in the war. A reader would expect the list to be those aircraft actually involved in war rather than just happened in the early 1940s. Propose we remove the ever long list of prototypes and the like that never actually entered service. MilborneOne (talk) 17:15, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

Disagree, many of them, despite not seeing production were still used for military purposes, and nearly every book listing aircraft of WW2 will include prototypes that went no-where. There is a reason they are listed separately, rather than in with the production aircraft, as someone looking to find it is was around in WW2 can see that it was (or was not) and that it had not entered service. - NiD.29 (talk) 05:09, 23 November 2018 (UTC)

Where is Gloster Meteor

It should be under Jet fighters and stuff Gloster Meteor

Try doing a text search of the page - it was there.

Someone's butchered edit messed up the page so it didn't show correctly - oh, wait - that was you! Try reading the whole page in future before jumping to unwarranted conclusions, and it might just be a good idea to play around with the wikipedia elements in a sandbox before you try them live. - NiD.29 (talk) 16:02, 26 May 2019 (UTC)

Very incomplete

This appears to only cover more major types used by combatants, and well-known prototypes, etc. But even going through a book like "Hamlyn's Concise Guide" you find dozens of minor aircraft types employed by the US in various training and liason services, each under their own USAAF or USN designation. To cover EVERY aircraft type used by all combatants, direct or indirect, it would have to be a much longer list.

64.223.91.164 (talk) 17:33, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

Splitting article

I think this article would benefit from being split into separate articles by country or at least divided as such with separate sections for each nation. Mrkoiking1 (talk) 23:33, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Other articles exist for that eg List of aircraft of the French Air Force during World War II , List of aircraft of the United Kingdom in World War II, List of aircraft of Poland during World War II GraemeLeggett (talk) 11:20, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

Eliminating the 'Operators' column

GraemeLeggett, one idea I have is to simplify the tables by eliminating the operators column. I feel like it adds information that already exists in the individual aircraft articles. Eliminating the column would simplify the table and communicate the intended information more effectively. WRD2030 (talk) 14:16, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

the point of the table as I see it is to identify:

1. the aircraft design
2. where the aircraft originated
3. how many were produced
4. when it started to be used
5. who used it

thereby someone reading the table can get a possible grasp of significance of the aircraft in the war without having to change pages and reading the aircraft article infobox.

Otherwise this article would just be a bulleted list of article names.

You should probably also check the WPAviation/WPMilHist projects' content guidelines to see if there is something there. GraemeLeggett (talk) 16:31, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

Okay, thank you for clarifying. WRD2030 (talk) 19:23, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

Alphabetize the table

GraemeLeggett, since we're putting the aircraft in the first column, should the tables be alphabetized by aircraft? WRD2030 (talk) 01:21, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

In most respects they still are - the manufacturer's name being part of the alphabetical structure. - Supermarine Spitfire coming later in the list than Hawker Typhoon GraemeLeggett (talk) 09:14, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

Got it, thanks for the clarification. WRD2030 (talk) 14:27, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

Number built column

GraemeLeggett, I've also noticed that some of the numbers in the 'number built' column are different from some of the aircraft pages in other languages. For example, the table lists approximately 100 Ju 388 aircraft built but the German language article for the aircraft lists 94. Should the tables rely on the other language pages for production numbers? WRD2030 (talk) 15:01, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

If there's a source on another lang wiki that gives a value you can add that value with the source to the En Wiki article. But you should check the source too. And if the value is different but sourced in EnWiki, then both values remain. GraemeLeggett (talk) 18:13, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

Understood, thanks again. WRD2030 (talk) 19:02, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

Carrier-based naval bombers table

GraemeLeggett, I've added a column to the 'Carrier-based naval bombers' table detailing the type of specific bomber. However, this might not be ideal since it creates visual inconsistencies among the tables. Would it be worth creating separate tables based on the subtypes or creating superscript notes in the 'aircraft' column? -Thanks,WRD2030 (talk) 19:15, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

I think it's time you went and read the WPAVATION project guidelines on lists. You can find it via the banner at top of this talkpage. GraemeLeggett (talk) 19:23, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

Could you point me to a guide on lists with the WPAviation project? -Thanks WRD2030 (talk) 19:30, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia:AVLIST GraemeLeggett (talk) 04:21, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing me to this. WRD2030 (talk) 14:30, 1 August 2023 (UTC)