Ludicrously inaccurate air combat portrayals....

I agree with the rest, but this detail is in error:

Mustangs and Curtis Warhawks they flew early in the movie only carried around 150-200 rounds per .50 cal gun, giving maybe 10-15 seconds of actual firing time.

As I said on this board when the movie came out over a year ago, on a number of threads that have since expired:

I'm a retired US Army reserve components armor/cavalry officer, but I started my military career as a US Air Force F-4 Phantom Weapons Systems Officer (backseater).

To paraphrase General George S. Patton, George Lucas doesn't know anything more about real aerial warfare than he does about f ***ing! (And George C. Scott may have said "fornicating" in the movie Patton, but the real Patton used the real F-word!)

Lucas was absolutely the worst person in the movie industry to do this movie. This movie is only the latest of many giant steps down the primrose path which Lucas started the world's movie-viewing public with the first Star Wars movie in 1977; I distinctly remember the documentary on the making of that movie, in which Lucas patted himself on the back for patterning his battle scenes after what he claimed to be the most realistic dogfight scenes ever filmed, and at the same time in the documentary intercutting his scenes with those from A Yank in the RAF which were absolutely the phoniest looking flying scenes ever filmed! And he hasn't bothered to learn jack s**t about aerial warfare in the last 35 years; he's just conned most of the whole world into thinking his cartoonish creations are reality when they're the farthest thing from it.

The technical fallacies are far too numerous to list. Lucas doesn't know the first thing about physics or aerodynamics, let alone the complexities of basic fighter maneuvering required to put bullets into another airplane and to prevent another airplane from doing that to one's own. He just makes his CGI airplanes do anything he wants them to do to fit his fantasies and fiction.

Lucas is welcome to create his own sci-fi universe where he makes the rules. But for an "historical" movie like this claims to be, Chuck Jones could have made cartoon Mustangs imitating the Road Runner and cartoon Messerschmitts imitating Wile E. Coyote and his Acme gadgets, and they wouldn't have been any more technically inaccurate.

Someone on the earlier threads asked me about a specific maneuver shown in the movie where a Tuskegee Airman, flying a P-51 Mustang, pulls back on the stick in a loop, kicks the rudder over and immediately turns in a circle no larger than the length of the aircraft and comes guns-on to the trailing German Bf-109 fighter. My response was:

1. No airplane ever yet built can pull the g-force required to turn in its own length as depicted, without disintegrating, starting with the wings falling off.

2. A Mustang might bleed off its airpeed in a climb as depicted, enough to do a hammerhead stall and flip over nose down, probably not nearly as quickly as shown, but I emphasize that the maneuver is called a hammerhead stall, which means that as the aircraft points nose down, it is almost at zero airspeed and the pilot does not have control of the aircraft and can't possibly maneuver the nose to aim his guns.

3. Only a completely untrained rookie would continue straight and level and not pull up after the Mustang as the Bf-109 pilot did, and not begin evasive action once the Mustang went behind his 3-9 line. While the quality of fighter pilots in the Luftwaffe steadily declined as many of their aces and experts were killed off in the the great Mustang air superiority campaign of 1944, I'm not sure the Germans were that desperate as to send up someone that untrained at that point in the war.

Another scene I remember has a P-51 chasing a Bf-109 at the same speed, and then the Bf-109 goes into a hard turn which the P-51 tries to duplicate, but the Bf-109 turns in a circle with a radius equal to its own length, and turns 360 degrees in the same time that the P-51 takes to turn 90 degrees in a much wider-radius arc so that the Bf-109 ends up perpendicular to and pointing at the P-51. Again, in real life, no airplane yet built could withstand the g-forces of as tight a turn as the Bf-109 was doing at those speeds without disintegrating, starting with the wings falling off. Secondly, unless he had a craniorectal insertion, any properly trained, combat-ready USAAF P-51 pilot would be able to match the rate and radius of turn of a Bf-109 he was chasing at the same speed in front of him, using vertical maneuvering to stay inside the Bf-109's turning circle (it's called a high yoyo or quarter-plane maneuver depending on the extent of the maneuver) and keep it from getting behind the P-51's wingline (the 3-9 line).

In one scene a Bf-109 can turn in its own length in front of a P-51 and get a beam shot on a P-51 before the P-51 can even make 90 degrees of turn, in another scene the P-51 does the same thing to the Bf-109. The fact that you have these two scenes proves that Lucas and his CGI cartoonists just make the airplanes do whatever they feel like rather than following the laws of physics and reality and the capabilities of the aircraft.

George Lucas is too ignorant, and possibly too stupid, to understand the complexities involved in even a simple maneuver as a break turn or a loop, and is obviously too lazy and egotistical to have tried to learn anything about it over the last 35 years. Red Tails is analogous to watching a movie about Jackie Robinson's first few seasons with the Dodgers, made using CGI, and having each of his non-homerun hits zigzag 90 degrees in midair several times to get past and around the infielders.

why are you acting surprised? war movies are always inaccurate for the sake of pace and entertainment. Any 100% realistic portrayal of combat would be a huge bore.

I thought that the German jets only got in the sky in the waning days of the war. I believed they were never is real combat but just flew around our pilots a little bit. So, were the German jets engaged is combat, dog fights during the war?

"Stay on target!"

"We're too close!"

"Stay on target!"

i guess that you have seen this movie with angry eyes. The black guy in the Red Tail that duels with the Me262 gets shot clean tru the ribs twice, not the shoulder. And dies soon after from the wounds. And those "many seconds" they fire at each other are shot and countershot takes that in cinema can mean simultaneous actions.
And it seems you are blind to the narrative shown tru the movie of Prety Boy growing enmity with the Red Tails. In the end his squad ignores the usual targets and go for the "African pilots". He dogfights because its personal. Maybe he is stupid? He is nazi after all...

Yes I am well versed in what aircraft and the men who fly them can do. I did cringe at the inaccurate things in this movie. BUT you missed the whole point of the movie. The fact that you spend your time on crap that doesn't address the point of the movie shows why the movie was made in the first place. You are part of the problem. If all you can see in this film is a war movie then you have missed the point entirely.