Shortround6
Major General
moving some of this discussion here.
Hindsight is wonderful. Memos and letters are wonderful but they were written by men who sometimes did not have perfect knowledge. Or perhaps they desired certain outcomes without a clear idea of how to get there.
Now there was memo, shortened in many books/internet posts, from Jan 19th 1942 from the Chief of the Experimental Engineering Section at Wright field that says ".....it is wrong to continue the development about the P-40 type airplane on any basis whatsoever."
My own first reaction was;
Maybe they should have not developed the P-40K,L,M and Ns ??????
Now that actual snippet can be used by P-40 fans to show how wrong certain people in the US high command were about the P-40. P-40 critics will use it show how wrong the USAAC was to not switch to something else, after all, they knew the P-40 was obsolete in Jan 1942, 5-6 weeks after Pearl Harbor.
Now the guy who wrote it was the Chief of the Experimental Engineering Section at Wright field. He was not in charge of procurement of existing fighters, Or deployment of existing fighters. He was trying to work on the future fighters, like 2-4 years down the road. As of Jan 1942 the US had placed contracts for just about every fighter from the P-40 back in April 1939 for the production versions of the P-40 to the Republic XP-69 prototypes.
Using experimental engines at times. 29 different fighter programs (OK, includes the P-64, AT-6 converted to "fighter"). The man does not have enough personnel to handle the work load. As a further check, Bell had gotten a contract for 3 XP-59 jets in Sept 1941, 4 months before that memo was written.
From his point of view, perhaps working on the P-40 was holding up work on other things, The P-40 was a P-36 with a new engine so the basic design (aerodynamics and structure) was almost 4 years old when the P-40 contract was placed.
Now, with hindsight, most of the 29 Pursuit planes were failures to a greater or lesser extent. The P-40 had to stay in production and improved somewhat to paper over all those failures. A large number failed because the intended engines never made it. Some aircraft went through 3 different engines on paper before getting to fly just before being canceled. We, in 2024, have the luxury of knowing which engines failed and when, taking the modern wizz bang aircraft with them. Of the 29 Pursuit programs between the P-40 and the XP-69 only 6 were built in numbers exceeding a handful and that includes the P-43 and the P-59. Picking winners was hard. The fighters from P-70 (?) (converted A-20) onward date from after the memo being written.
We can argue back and forth over wither man was right or wrong, but we need to understand the context of when the memo was written.
How much staff they had and what they were trying to do.
Another snippet.
June 21, 1942
" ....it is believed that providing P-40 planes for all Marine fighting squadrons assigned to outlying bases of high importance is imperative, if the P-40 can be modified for carrier operations,"
This was from the Navy Dept to Operations and Planning Division (OPD) of the War Department that started from CinCPAC.
Now there a number of things can be read into this and perhaps it needs more context. It was written about 2 weeks after Midway and the slaughter of Marine squadron using Buffalo's was probably on their mind. It was also about 5-6 weeks from the end of the resistance in the Philippines, any/all island bases that existed or were to be built needed fighters and there were only 3 real choices. F4Fs, P-39s, or P-40s. Navy had a pretty good idea of F4F production and inventory, present and planed. Maybe the P-40 was a better fighter, maybe not. But if they can't get enough F4Fs what is the 2nd choice? Or what allows the Navy to keep the F4Fs on carriers and give the land based Marines something else?
The memo does not give the model of P-40. What they had in the Pacific were P-40Es. Getting a P-40 to operate off a carrier also needs a lot of clarification. Be flown off to outlying base and not landed on a carrier again for months? Or actually operate like Marine F4Fs on carriers?
It turns out they did figure out how to at least fly the P-40s from carriers. Although it was one way, hoisted on board (?) and flown off for Torch and other operations (?) but that required some tricks, like flying to land base to fill up the fuel tanks and load ammo. The planes were not really combat capable when they flew off the carriers. But the memo doesn't spell out what modified for carrier operations means>
Fully carrier capable or suitable for flying off in transport operations or some level in between?
Now the book where this appears inserts it right after a number of paragraphs on the P-40F evaluation by the Navy in early June of 1942. But there is no proof that the two incidents (evaluation and memo) are actually connected. There is no proof that they are not either.
If the memo/letter was quoted correctly it says "P-40" with no letter. The P-40F first production delivery was April 3rd 1942 and the First P-40K production delivery was May 19th 1942. It could very well be that CinCPAC wanted any sort of P-40 to supplement F4Fs.
Again we are looking backwards from 80 years at snippets without a lot of details.
Hindsight is wonderful. Memos and letters are wonderful but they were written by men who sometimes did not have perfect knowledge. Or perhaps they desired certain outcomes without a clear idea of how to get there.
Now there was memo, shortened in many books/internet posts, from Jan 19th 1942 from the Chief of the Experimental Engineering Section at Wright field that says ".....it is wrong to continue the development about the P-40 type airplane on any basis whatsoever."
My own first reaction was;
Maybe they should have not developed the P-40K,L,M and Ns ??????
Now that actual snippet can be used by P-40 fans to show how wrong certain people in the US high command were about the P-40. P-40 critics will use it show how wrong the USAAC was to not switch to something else, after all, they knew the P-40 was obsolete in Jan 1942, 5-6 weeks after Pearl Harbor.
Now the guy who wrote it was the Chief of the Experimental Engineering Section at Wright field. He was not in charge of procurement of existing fighters, Or deployment of existing fighters. He was trying to work on the future fighters, like 2-4 years down the road. As of Jan 1942 the US had placed contracts for just about every fighter from the P-40 back in April 1939 for the production versions of the P-40 to the Republic XP-69 prototypes.
Using experimental engines at times. 29 different fighter programs (OK, includes the P-64, AT-6 converted to "fighter"). The man does not have enough personnel to handle the work load. As a further check, Bell had gotten a contract for 3 XP-59 jets in Sept 1941, 4 months before that memo was written.
From his point of view, perhaps working on the P-40 was holding up work on other things, The P-40 was a P-36 with a new engine so the basic design (aerodynamics and structure) was almost 4 years old when the P-40 contract was placed.
Now, with hindsight, most of the 29 Pursuit planes were failures to a greater or lesser extent. The P-40 had to stay in production and improved somewhat to paper over all those failures. A large number failed because the intended engines never made it. Some aircraft went through 3 different engines on paper before getting to fly just before being canceled. We, in 2024, have the luxury of knowing which engines failed and when, taking the modern wizz bang aircraft with them. Of the 29 Pursuit programs between the P-40 and the XP-69 only 6 were built in numbers exceeding a handful and that includes the P-43 and the P-59. Picking winners was hard. The fighters from P-70 (?) (converted A-20) onward date from after the memo being written.
We can argue back and forth over wither man was right or wrong, but we need to understand the context of when the memo was written.
How much staff they had and what they were trying to do.
Another snippet.
June 21, 1942
" ....it is believed that providing P-40 planes for all Marine fighting squadrons assigned to outlying bases of high importance is imperative, if the P-40 can be modified for carrier operations,"
This was from the Navy Dept to Operations and Planning Division (OPD) of the War Department that started from CinCPAC.
Now there a number of things can be read into this and perhaps it needs more context. It was written about 2 weeks after Midway and the slaughter of Marine squadron using Buffalo's was probably on their mind. It was also about 5-6 weeks from the end of the resistance in the Philippines, any/all island bases that existed or were to be built needed fighters and there were only 3 real choices. F4Fs, P-39s, or P-40s. Navy had a pretty good idea of F4F production and inventory, present and planed. Maybe the P-40 was a better fighter, maybe not. But if they can't get enough F4Fs what is the 2nd choice? Or what allows the Navy to keep the F4Fs on carriers and give the land based Marines something else?
The memo does not give the model of P-40. What they had in the Pacific were P-40Es. Getting a P-40 to operate off a carrier also needs a lot of clarification. Be flown off to outlying base and not landed on a carrier again for months? Or actually operate like Marine F4Fs on carriers?
It turns out they did figure out how to at least fly the P-40s from carriers. Although it was one way, hoisted on board (?) and flown off for Torch and other operations (?) but that required some tricks, like flying to land base to fill up the fuel tanks and load ammo. The planes were not really combat capable when they flew off the carriers. But the memo doesn't spell out what modified for carrier operations means>
Fully carrier capable or suitable for flying off in transport operations or some level in between?
Now the book where this appears inserts it right after a number of paragraphs on the P-40F evaluation by the Navy in early June of 1942. But there is no proof that the two incidents (evaluation and memo) are actually connected. There is no proof that they are not either.
If the memo/letter was quoted correctly it says "P-40" with no letter. The P-40F first production delivery was April 3rd 1942 and the First P-40K production delivery was May 19th 1942. It could very well be that CinCPAC wanted any sort of P-40 to supplement F4Fs.
Again we are looking backwards from 80 years at snippets without a lot of details.
