Was the Bearcat as good as the Late War Japanese fighters?

[Soundbreaker Welch?]

Hmm.........but this poll is for the experts like you guys. Not in my territory.

I had heard it set the record for fastest piston powered aircraft at 528 mph. On Wikipedia it says the Corsair was "marginally faster."

Could a Corsair have beat the Bearcat's record?

One thing about the Bearcat. It looks like a bootleg copy of a FW. Which it is. In some ways it takes away from it's speciality.

[plan_D]

In terms of combat, it certainly was as good if not better. But it was a fleet defence fighter and lacked the range of most other Pacific planes. It basically was a big engine with wings, and still holds the time to climb record for a piston plane, to 10,000 feet.

[syscom3]

It was a shipboard anti-kamikazi interceptor.

It didnt need the range as the Corsair and Hellcat.

[timshatz]

The Bearcat also had an advantage in reliability and structural strength. Grumman was famous for making very sturdy machines and the Bearcat was no different. But beyond that, the American warmaking capicity was far and away greater than Japans by 1944-45. Not only in design, but in materials of manufacture and quality of workmanship.

All points noted above will affect an aircraft in more than a marginal way. But focusing on the materials and workmanship, the quality of both of them defines the changeout time for an engine by up to a factor of 4. When an R-2800 might not have to be changed for a 100 hours, whereas the Mitsubishi Ha-112 might have to be changed out in 25-50 hours due to materials substitution affecting the wear of critical parts. Also, fit and finish was definitely affected in the Japanese war industry as the war came to a close. One only see the difference between the Arisaka rifles in the begining of the war and the "Last Ditch" models produced in 1945 to get a good idea of this point.

About design, the Japanese fighters towards the end of the war were just working into the realm of 1500+ Hp engines (Ex. KI-100) whereas the US had been producing aircraft with reliable 2000 Hp engines since '42. And not a just a few, tens of thousands of them (P47, F6F, ect). The Japanese, while they made some beautiful aircraft that did their jobs well, could never really compete on the long run with a country that had an industrial componet 5 to 10 times greater. They could produce a few very good aircraft, but not the thousands, or even tens of thousands needed to take on the B29 and Fast Carrier fleets.

[syscom3]

One neat thing about the Bearcat was the wing tips were deisgned to break off under high gee's.

[evangilder]

Only in the original design. That was later removed.

[Hunter368]

One neat thing about the Bearcat was the wing tips were deisgned to break off under high gee's.

Why was it designed to do that? plz explain

[timshatz]

Here's a link on a pilot's reaction to flying the Bearcat. Has a paragraph in there saying the tips were made to release under high Gs during aerobatic manuvers. Not sure why, probably seemed like a good idea at the time. Kind of odd, when you think about it. Anyway, the tips used to come off asymetrically, leaving one on and one off. Big problem. They dumped the idea. Sounds like it didn't make it past the test pilot stage. Good article.

http://www.avweb.com/news/columns/182122-1.html

[lesofprimus]

Nice link...

[syscom3]

Thats a cool link about the Bearcat

[SHOOTER]

Why was it designed to do that? plz explain

The tips were designed to shear off under 9G load to prevent the center section of the wing from exceeding it's load factor! Thus if the pilot pulled back on the stick to much at high speed the tips would fail and leave the rest of the plain to return home. This was done to save a lot of weight.

[evangilder]

That article was written by John Deakin, who was the wing safety officer at our wing of the CAF for awhile. Hell of a nice guy, and a good writer as well. If you search on that site, he has many articles on different aircraft. He has a book out now too, filled with his stories called "Full Throttle". You can check out some info on John and his book here:
http://www.aeromedix.com/index.php?_...ku&sku=bkfullt

[elmilitaro]

Nice.

[timshatz]

Pretty wild that a 21 year old was flying P51s and F8Fs in the same way a kid would be flying C-150s or Piper Tomahawks today. Without military training, he must've been one helluva pilot to handle those things. That is a ton of torque, no hydraulic help on the controls and a very busy cockpit to worry about. Especially the Bearcat. Even though it was a Carrier bird (and probably had decent low speed handling) it still packed a lot of weight on short wings with a honkin' big engine up front. Don't know what the wing loading was but it had to be pretty high.

All those last generation piston engined fighters looked like they took a lot of attention to detail to fly. Bearcat, Griffon Engined Spit, Tempest and Fury must've had a high pucker factor just getting into the cockpit.

[lesofprimus]

My Grandfather flew the Bearcat twice, after the Japanese surrender, and I remember him on a few occasions saying that had the Corsair flown like the Bearcat, he would have scored more than the 8 kills he was credited with, but that the design of the Corsair saved his life several times, so...........

He was honored to have flown the F4U...