Messerschmitt Me 209 (1943) vs McDonnell FH Phantom

The Me 209 of 1943 was an attempt to create an enhanced version of the Bf 109, which served as the Luftwaffe's primary fighter aircraft throughout World War II. The Me 209, despite its designation, bore no relationship to the earlier Me 209.The RLM's 8-209 airframe number assigned to Messerschmitt, for its pair of post-July 1938 designation Me 209 airframes, was used for two projects during the late 1930s and early 1940s. The first Me 209 was a single-engine air speed record plane for which little consideration was given to adaptation for combat.

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The McDonnell FH Phantom was a twinjet fighter aircraft designed and first flown during World War II for the United States Navy. The Phantom was the first purely jet-powered aircraft to land on an American aircraft carrier and the first jet deployed by the United States Marine Corps. Although with the end of the war, only 62 FH-1s were built, it helped prove the viability of carrier-based jet fighters. As McDonnell's first successful fighter, leading to the development of the follow-on F2H Banshee, which was one of the two most important naval jet fighters of the Korean War, it would also establish McDonnell as an important supplier of navy aircraft. When McDonnell chose to bring the name back with the Mach 2–class McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II, it launched what would become the most versatile and widely used western combat aircraft of the Vietnam War era, adopted by the USAF and the US Navy, remaining in use with various countries to the present day.The FH Phantom was originally designated the FD Phantom, but the designation was changed as the aircraft entered production.

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