Recent content by JtD

Heavy bombers as a trend were more stable than medium bombers, which makes them a better bombing platform. However, in the overall accuracy evaluation of WW2 bombing, this would at best be a footnote.

Loading factors for most WW2 fighter aircraft were in the 12g range. Paper is patient, though, since weight of the aircraft usually increased progressively, while structural reinforcements rarely came, as they required a redesign of major components and later versions of the same aircraft had...

Good summary, but you applied prop efficiency twice. A 50 kW engine power increase at 80% prop efficiency on a 2000kg plane gives 40kW / 2000kg / 9.81m/s² = 2.04 m/s increase in climb rate, the 20% difference to your 1.6 coming from the mentioned double efficiency application.

Actually, Wildcats were field modded to carry up to 500lb of bombs and late versions were modified to carry 5" rockets. Which, in this scenario, would be my weapon of choice. In any case, it's better to bring bombs than to not bring bombs, even if these are only small 100lb ones. Not every ship...

World's best radial engined fighters at the time of BoB might have been the Bloch MB150 series or the Curtiss Hawk series - both of which were competitive with a 109E or Spitfire, but fell a bit short of that performance. I doubt that contemporary British developments would have been so much...

...and for the fighter pilot, too. After all, there are stories of B-17 carrying the remains of Luftwaffe fighters home after a collision, but no stories about a Luftwaffe fighter carrying home half a B-17. ;)

Induced drag is pretty easy to estimate fairly accurately. Again here's a link to wiki: Lift-induced drag - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. If you check the formula, the only thing unknown will be the wing efficiency, which doesn't vary by a wide margin in comparable flight states. It's also...

I like your approach, and I do agree that the "bad rate of climb" of the P-51 needs to be balanced against the range it had. Helps putting it into perspective. But I think you overestimated the impact of the 900lb reduced fuel load, in particular at higher altitudes. How did you arrive at this...

The question of the OP is the use in the Pacific War, not the use after WW2. In that sense, I wouldn't hold it against the F6F that Grumman went with a completely new design, the F8F, where Vought went with an upgraded F4U. Does no one know the unit cost of F4U and F6F, preferably in...

Generally speaking that's right, but there were several B and C submodels (B15, C5, C10?) using the -7 engine. Those were about 5 mph faster than a D at all altitudes.

Which of the two was cheaper?

The Spitfire was designed for load factors of 2*5 up for most Merlin variants and 2*6 for most Griffon variants. This means a design load factor of 10g or 12g respectively, which had to be possible in both positive and negative direction. The typical US fighter, such as the P-47, F4U or P-51...

It's not the best idea to use high altitude performance as a reference, where a large part of the drag is induced. Try using an A-5 without outer wing guns, it's got at least a similar weight and armament. Fact is that Focke Wulf estimated the the BMW installation on the A-9 to produce ~30% more...

The D-9 was longer than the A-8. That alone improves the aircrafts aerodynamics. I only know the data for the TS engine, the D-9 achieves the same speed at ~5% less power. That's comparing an improvised in-line with a pre-war radial installation, at top speed. If you look at bombers that flew...

I really don't know why you keep insisting that radials are worse than inlines. In fact, by leaving out the water, radials do not require the same cooling area and in theory are less draggy than inlines. The rest is simply a design question - the practical application of the theory - which was...