Recent content by renrich

According to Eric Brown, RN, the Martlet was at least as good as the Sea Hurricane as a shipbord fighter and probably superior.

B26-fast, heavily armed, decent bomb load, could be used as a torpedo plane and had the lowest attrition rate of any US AC in Europe.

I have a Janes, 1945 ( not an original) and a 1942 Janes(original) When you look at the war loss section, it is staggering how many British vessels went down. Probably the most dangerous British type to serve on in WW2 was the armed merchant cruiser. Very sad.

Is this the F4U4 that had the collision while taxiing?

We know that an F4U1D intercepted and rammed a Japanese recon plane at 38000 feet above Okinawa. He made at least a couple of runs. The F4U1D had not nearly as good altitude performance as the F4U5.

Quite a number of years ago I read a book authored by a retired British Admiral about the RN during WW2. I am a great admirer of the RN. Read every one of C S Forester's books and one of my favorite books in my library is "Castles of Steel" by Massie. My favorite naval battle to read about is...

Actually, during the "war" between the Navy and AF about whether B36s were a substitute for carriers, the Navy postulated that the F4U5 could intercept the B36 at altitude.

Cars during WW2 and afterward were powered mostly by liquid cooled reciprocating engines just like many of the AC of that time. Today most AC are powered by gas turbine engines except for general aviation types which are largely powered by air cooled reciprocating engines. There was a very valid...

The Bearcat was not developed from the Hellcat. It actually took over the mission of the FM2 which was to operate from CVEs. It was a new design but initially came out with the same armament as the FM2. I am not at all sure the only mission for a fighter in 1946 was long range bomber escort. I...

My suspicion is that most members of this forum are not old enough to remember when cooling problems were a major cause of breakdowns in cars with liquid cooled engines, which was most of the cars back in the late forties and early fifties when I started driving. That may be the reason that most...

Please don't blame Lundstrom for any assertion that Yorktown was lost because of six gun F4F4s. As far as I know he made no such assertion. I said that that a case could be made that Yorktown was lost because the Wildcats carried too little ammo. It would not be a very good case either...

During the Fighter Conference in 1944, there were pilots from Britain, manufacturers, AAF and USN. THere was a poll taken of the preferred engine for combat. The R2800 won handily over the Merlin, the only two engines that got many votes. Lindberg chose a radial, air cooled engine for the...

The CAP during the attacks on Yorktown had fighters from the other carriers in it. One thing that hampered the CAP was that there was no one controller for the CAP and different carriers used different commands over the radio. All of the action that took place during Midway regarding the US CVs...

In Lundstrom, " The First Team," There is a whole chapter of the book ,#18 called "Midway Lessons- The F4F4 Controversy" In the chapter it is related how the Navy told Eastern that the eleventh production FM1 must revert to the four gun package and the result with some other small changes was a...

As far as I know I never saw or ppssessed a DD214. That was a long time ago though.