Only one fighter

[renrich]

733 P47Bs and Cs were ordered by the US Army in Sept. 1940, so the P47 was definitely in development in 1940. To say that the P47 could "easily be adapted for carrier use" is probably a huge stretch. To begin with the early P47s had problems with landing gear collapses. That is hardly a recipe for succesful carrier operations. Even more problematical was the fact that the P47 was always known as a ground lover. How a P47 could take off from a carrier would be a real question. At the joint fighter conference in 1944, the P47 was not even mentioned when it came to the category-"best overload take off from a small area." The P47 was a fine AC but the early versions were range limited, had poor climb and were not very good performers until they got really high. One of my uncles was a IP in P39s and P47s and he told me that when they encountered Corsairs in mock dogfights in their P47s, the F4Us made mincemeat out of them. I actually thought my first post was pretty clear but to say that development of the Wildcat would lead to the Hellcat is like saying development of the SBD would lead to the AD. In both cases they were completely different air craft. Even if the Hellcat was legitimate as a development of the Wildcat, the Corsair was superior to the Hellcat in most areas, particularly as a ground based fighter.

[renrich]

Interesting coincidence when it comes to shipboard fighters being considered as inferior to land based fighters. There were two fighters designed in the beginning as shipboard fighters that turned out to be very effective as fighters and fighter bombers, in land based versions as well as ship board versions. They were both in production for a long time, they were both bought and used by several foreign countries besides the US and they were used in numerous wars and foreign actions. They both had inverted gull wings(more or less) and they were both F4s. One was the F4U and the other was the F4H and in their day they were considered close to the epitome of fighter design.

[Sgt. Pappy]

If you think about it, performance-wise, a shipbourne a.c will be less agile than its exact frame in a land-based configuration (i.e. no folding wings, no hydraulics for the wings, no arrester gear etc.) Though I know what you mean. Hall and Vought pretty much disproved the common stereotype of a any naval design being worse than the land based design.

Britain, however, usually had inferior naval planes. But if Britain had been in the Naval war chaos which the US was experiencing, their Seafire probably would have been great by 1944. The Seafire XV was already a great plane... simply a cleaned-up naval version of the rag-tag, jerry-rigged but good Spitfire XII of early 1943.

[Elvis]

Renrich,

That's the first time I've ever heard of P-47's have landing gear issues.
Is there anything that you could link to that talks about that in any depth?



Elvis

[renrich]

I am more of a book guy than internet expert as I have accumulated a fairly large library of books. My preferred reference on US fighters WW2 is"America's Hundred Thousand' by Francis Dean. This tome has almost everything you would want to know about the roughly 100,000 fighters the US produced during WW2 including a chronology of their use. On page 287 the book mentions the gear collapses on the runway as one of the several teething problems of the early P47s. This was in March, 1943 and I don't know if this was a structural or hydraulic problem but I think the weight of the P47 and it's long takeoff run would be more significant in shipboard use. As far as the Spitfire- Seafire use on carriers is concerned, if the Spitfire had been modified enough to make it robust enough and truly suitable for anything but stopgap use on carrier duty, much of that sparkling performance would have been lost because of increased weight and then you would have had to deal with it's short range which was essentially insoluble. To me the salient point about the AC of the RN was that shortly after the end of WW1, there was a political battle in Britain about who was to have overall responsibility for the future of England's air arm, the RN or an entity which turned out to be the RAF. The RAF was the winner and that meant that the design, development and deployment of the AC in the Fleet Air Arm was controlled by the RAF. You can be assured that if the US Army had been detailed to determine what AC would serve in our Navy, few if any of the superb AC that fought for the USN in WW2 would have made it to our carriers. That is the main reason that the RN was stuck with inferior AC until they bought American.

[MacArther]

For the sake of laughs, I would have taken the P40, and jumped on Curtiss' back from the beggining to institute massive upgrades in each variant, instead of piecemeal ones. P40Q with bubble top, 2000 pound of bombs, and a capacity for 4 20mm guns doesnt look too bad.

Then again, this is all coming from someone who has a P40 in their signature.....

[drgondog]

Originally Posted by Elvis

Ok, before this turns into some kind of blood bath and I'm marked as some kind of "bad guy", let me apologize to renrich and drgndog if I offended them.

I'm OK - I've been called worse

I suppose, given the further expanation of the original statement, I would have to say that maybe its not one single design that would've been best, but maybe a marriage of the best points of several "more desireable" designs?

...or maybe not, since that may result in aircraft assembled by "comittee".

Of course renrich did mention that whatever aircraft was selected, did not neccessarily have to be the epitome of aricraft design of its day, since we're given the chance to work with the design and develop it into something all forces could use.

In my case, that may mean that, should the F4F be accepted, maybe the "development outcome" would've been the F6F, just sooner than it had actually happened (of course, without that crashed Zero to use as a test mule, a lot of developement would've been more "guesswork" than the actual flight characteristic data they did have to work with, resulting in an aircraft that may have been slightly inferior to the actual F6F).

I think Renrich had in mind limited airframe mods - same basic wing, engine type and engine evolution (i.e swap a Merlin for an Allison, etc. So the P-47J and the P-51H drop out of contention in that definition as a final evolutionary step.

On the other hand the F6F completely different airframe and wing from F6F and ditto for f8F


Given all of this, including the further qualifying of Renrich's question, it seems to me that maybe the "best" aricraft to pick may have been the P-47.
It had superior firepower and armour, was tougher than rawhide, could be easily adapated for carrier use, could carry a decent bomb load (when/if needed), could easily be adapted to a non-fighter role (such as an air ambulance - all you Vietnam era guys, think "Sandy") and was agile and fast.

Given all that, its a pretty hard design not to pick.


...and before you guys rag all over me, its not that I have anything against the F4U.




Elvis

No rag or gag - your opinion is fine. Where those of who favor the F4U over the P-47 is that it seems to combine all the attributes (positive) of the P-47 in context of bomb load and firepower (if you want the 4x 20MM version), better basic dogfighter performance in same context as P-51 and had significantly more intitial range than the Jug when it was needed the most in 1943.

It fell short below 30,000 feet but candidly that's all about engine and mission - there just wasn't any need for the F4U to tangle above 25,000 feet... but see no reason it doesn't get close to 51 and 47 with mod to engine/turbo combination.

As for comparing the P-47 as a VietNam Sandy, think A7D instead of the P-47 or A1E.

Regards,

Bill

[renrich]

Curtis tried to develop follow on models to the P40, namely the XP46 and XP60. Different varients of these models included Merlin engines, laminar flow wings, turbo charged Allisons and R2800s with 2 contra rotating props. None of them could exceed the performance of fighters already in production.

[renrich]

An interesting sidebar to the battle over who would control the British air arm post WW1 was that Admiral Beatty of Jutland and battle cruiser fame was the primary advocate of the RN having control of the air assets. He was the one who supposedly said, after watching another of his battle cruisers apparently blowing up(I think Princess Royal) "Something seems to be the matter with our bloody ships today. Steer two points closer to the enemy."

[davparlr]

Originally Posted by renrich

One of my uncles was a IP in P39s and P47s and he told me that when they encountered Corsairs in mock dogfights in their P47s, the F4Us made mincemeat out of them.

Must have been below 25k as the Report of Joint Fighter Conference indicates that the P-47 was the best fighter above 25K. The F4U-1 came at third, quite a bit below the ratings of no. 2 P-51. Below 25K the F4U-1 again came in a third, but close, to the F8F and again right behind the P-51.

[Jank]

Interesting discussion.

Mock dogfights between friendlies are really just twisty turny games of tag / keep away and were not really indicative of the vast majority of actual combat which was fought utilizing boom and zoom tactics. Read encounter reports from Mustang and Bolt drivers for a plethora of illustrative examples.

Imagine if you will what conclusions one would draw had such contests been held between 109's/190's and P-47's. The P-47's would get waxed 95% of the time. And the 5% of the contests where the P-47's came out on top would be due to mismatched pilot skills. We know that the P-47 held its own quite effectively though in spite of performance that would have lead one to conclude that it was not fit for air to air combat.

Such contests also do not factor aircraft survivability. Just look at the huge disparity between Hellcats and Corsairs with respect to surviving AA hits. Corsairs were more than 50% more likely than Hellcats to leave their pilots in the soup, behind enemy lines or just plain dead after suffering AA hits. There is no reason to believe that the vulnerability of the Corsair's oil coolers was confined solely to AA hits either as hits from even small caliber rounds in the .30 caliber class were known to put a Corsair down in a matter of minutes. ( See pages 15 to conclusion in the thread "Hardest plane to take down in WW2?" http://www.ww2aircraft.net/forum/avi...2-3114-15.html (Hardest plane to take down in WW2?) )

[The Basket]

To me the P-40 was a stopgap between biplanes and the P-51.

To remove the P-40 from production for a superfighter which may or may not be available would be silly.

If the only good thing about the P-40 was availability then so what...better something than nothing. You would have to keep it in production for numbers alone.

[CPWN]

P47 take off from carrier

[renrich]

Dav, your report from the joint fighter conference must be different from mine because mine does not mention the F8F. Something else I noticed which seems screwy to me in the report is that the F4U4 is listed behind the F4U1D in both best fighter below and above 25000 feet. The F4U4 had substantially better performance than the F4U1D so that doesn't make sense to me. My guess is that ACM in WW2 took place largely below 25000 feet. As Bill has stated before if the Corsair had needed to have better performance up high, a supercharger modification could have provided it as in the F4U5. Since the oil cooler issue has been discovered on the F4U, one wonders how they shot down all those Japanese AC with the loss of only 189 Corsairs in ACM? No question however about the P47 being a formidable fighter and fighter bomber. Going back to the statistics business the P47s sorties/loss ratio in Europe was 138, the P51s was 85 and the P38s was 74. If someone asked me which one of those Ac I wanted to take into combat, I know which one I would take.

[davparlr]

Originally Posted by renrich

Dav, your report from the joint fighter conference must be different from mine because mine does not mention the F8F.

Strange. My book, on page 319, under "Best All-Around Fighter below 25,000 Feet" shows F8F-30%, P-51-29%, F4U-1-27%

Something else I noticed which seems screwy to me in the report is that the F4U4 is listed behind the F4U1D in both best fighter below and above 25000 feet. The F4U4 had substantially better performance than the F4U1D so that doesn't make sense to me. My guess is that ACM in WW2 took place largely below 25000 feet.

Looked funny to me, too. Since the test was run in Oct. '44, early for an F4U-4, maybe they had a bad bird.

No question however about the P47 being a formidable fighter and fighter bomber. Going back to the statistics business the P47s sorties/loss ratio in Europe was 138, the P51s was 85 and the P38s was 74. If someone asked me which one of those Ac I wanted to take into combat, I know which one I would take.

Depends on the mission. Of those three, for a air-to-ground my selection would certainly be the P-47, air-to-air would be the P-51, for mixed, probably the P-47.