Corsair vs Zero

[Cougar]

This is probually one of the most famous pair of planes of the pacific theater. The corsair, very manuverable tough and fast (417mph), one of the biggest fighters of the war with its massive 18 cylinder double wasp R-4360 raidial engine puting out 3,600 hp that spun the huge 13 foot 3 blade prop. It was feared by zero pilots. Six 50 cals could tear the zero apart and could sink small ships It was a leap in avaiation technology with new ways of making the fusalage more drag resistant and the gull wing to prevent the prop from hitting the deck of a carrier. Its combat carrier didnt stop after the war. Its bombing capabilitys were also acceptable and was used in korea and could carry 4500lbs of ordanance. and even shot a few migs down.
The zero,a copied design of howard hughes racer. at the start of the war was feared by american pilots it was very agile and fast compared to the wildcat. being very lite it only had a 900 hp 14cylinder double row raidial engine. It armerment was small ,two 7.7 mm machine guns in the nose and two 20mm cannons in the wings.
Until the corsair arrived the zero ruled the sky's but when the Corsair came it was majorly outclassed and was slaughtred. The Corsair was obviously the supirior fighter.

What do you think???

[JCS]

The zero,a copied design of howard hughes racer

I didnt know that....you wouldnt know the model of the plane it was copied from would you?

[R Pope]

Again with the story of the Zero being based on Hughes' racer! This has been debunked many times, but it still comes up. About as often as the one about the FW-190 also being copied from it. Neither has an ounce of truth to it! They were totally independent designs. Other than being low-wing monoplanes with round engines, there is no design commonality. Why not say the Jug or the Hellcat was a Hughes knockoff, too?

[Cougar]

youve never seen the racer have you, huges plane is so much like the zero, the tappred tail,the landing gear, the fusalage design. THe thunderbolt was also like the racer.

[Cougar]

I think its a striking resemblance

[Cougar]

.....

[Lightning Guy]

You must think all radial-engined aircraft look alike then. Try reading the book "Zero" and you'll find that it was a totally orignal design. And before you knock the Zero's fire power, compare it to the other designs of the times, like the 8 x .303s in contemporary Spits and Hurricanes or the 2 x .50s and 4 x .30s in a contemporary P-40s. The equipping of the 20mm gun was very advanced for its time.

And if you want to discuss the Zero vs. the Corsair, check your info. The Corsair was powered by a R-2800 Double Wasp which intially delivered 2,000hp though late-war models had this up to 2,850hp with water injection. The R-4360 Wasp Major to which you refer was only fitter to the F2G the grand production total of which was exactly 10 units with no combat time recorded.

[lesofprimus]

Someone just opened a can.....

[plan_D]

Of course the Corsair was superior but it wasn't the Corsair that stopped the Zero. The F6F Hellcat with proper tactics slaughtered the Zero, along with the P-38, the Spitfire Mk. VIII and several other planes arriving in 1943. Even then the P-40s from the AVG and Hurricane Mk.I from the RAF and IAF Squadrons in Burma were giving the Zero a run for their money.

[evangilder]

I'm with plan_D on this one. Granted, the F4U could do some serious damage to the zeros, and often did, the planes before it did alot more. LG is right, the fact are a little incorrect. 4,500 lbs. of bombs? WWII versions typically carried either 2 x 1,000 lbs. bombs or 8 x 5-inch rockets.

The Zero doesn't look like the Hughes racer IMO. It certainly does not look like the Thunderbolt.

[R Pope]

"Never seen the Hughes racer"? I have a copy of the blueprints drawn up for the ill-fated replica. Much smaller than the Zero, it was made of wood, and the landing gear legs had no cover doors, the legs themselves being contoured to fit flush. In some ways a more advanced concept than the Zero, and yet in others less so, the racer was acknowledged by Hughes himself as being unadaptable for combat. The Focke-Wulf looks more like it than the Zero does. This story stems from wartime jingoism, denigrating anything designed anywhere but in the USA. There was even a story that the first 190's encountered over France were captured P-36's! As if!!!!

[R Pope]

Plan-D---The AVG P-40's mostly fought against Oscars of the Japanese Army. The Zero was Navy. They always misidentified the Oscar as a Zero, much as Luftwaffe pilots always insisted it was a Spitfire that shot them down, not a lowly Hurricane. The Brits called it "Spitfire snobbery">

[R Pope]

Read my posts and saw an error, meant to say "The wings were made of wood" on the racer. The fuselage was of course a metal monocoque structure.

[Lightning Guy]

Saying that the Japanese aviation industry was dependant on copying American designs smacks of 1940 prejudices. Mind you it was exactly that kind of thinking that made the Zero (and vitrually all the other early-war Japanese types) such a shock to Western pilots.

[cheddar cheese]

I associate the P-38 with the Zero more than the Corsair. That said, I think the Corsair was far superior to the Zero...