Which was the better fighter plane of WW2?
Well, the spitfires won the war of numbers, for sure. They were better. There were probably several features of the Spitfire that allowed it to win the war, but the most obvious was the engine. All the German planes were low-compression, and designed to run on crappy gasoline that the Germans made from Coal. All the ground vehicles they used in the war were diesel powered. They did not have much appreciation for ultra-high-performance gasoline engines. The British on the other hand…. had lots and lots of appreciation for it. It’s interesting to note that the P51 Mustang, which is likely the “other” best fighter plane in WW2, had the same engine as a Spitfire.
When it was introduced the Focke -Wolf was a better plane than the model of the spitfire then in service, however due to the improvement and development programme in place by supermarine and in particular Joe smith who took over from Mitchell the spitfire and more importantly the merlin and later griffon engines where able to outperform any german piston engined fighter that it encountered, fuel injection was not new on the german side it had been used in the bf 109
