1941: the best case for 350+ mph CV fighters?

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tomo pauk

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Apr 3, 2008
...CV meaning 'carrier vessel'.
Basically - how would've looked a speedy carrier-borne fighter for each country with CVs, whether the carriers are in service or in pipeline. Best case, but still plausible (no non-historical engines or arodynamic properties), with acceptable low-speed characteristics, plus the weapon and protection suite as used on the fighters of respective air services/forces in 1941. With useful range/radius.
 
Well, the elephant in the room are the German and British conversions that coulda and shoulda, but never eventuated (well not quite true, the Me109T, the conversion of the E-3 was completed, but never flew from a carrier, the me 109f was only ever projected, whilst the seafire did happen and was used from a carrier but arrived vary late for the party). I am referring to the Me-109T and Me 109F conversions (mooted) for the failed KM carrier. For the British the missing thoroughbred was the seafire II, which the admiralty had wanted since at least 1939, but consistently rejected by an indifferent, even hostile air ministry.


The seafire needed some work, undoubtedly, but none of it was technically infeasible. The chief changes required were wing folding, strengthened landing gear, redesigned and widened landing gear as opposed to the narrow tracked types accepted for the land based version.


It would take until the Seafire III series before anything like a decent navalised version of the Spitfire was produced. It could have happened years before it did
 
The Corsair? If funds were available at Wartime levels, could the development have matured and production started to deploy it to the Fleet before the end of 1941. The first flight was May 1940.
 
Possibly. Additional funding would not have gone astray, but there were problems with the earliest prototypes revealed seriously weak main armament, CG issues and serious spin recovery issues. These were well on the way to being solved by June 1941, but delays in setting up production lines meant the type did not begin to enter squadron service until June 1942. It was literally years later before the USN accepted them for carrier service because of its limited vision characteristics and somewhat unsatisfactory handling capabilities.
 
The USN had considered the P-36 for potential naval service, but not the P-40.

On the otherhand, they did consider and evaluate a P-39 (XFL-1).

The XFL-1 was a response to the USN's 1938 request for a replacement for the current aircraft in service - it may be of interest that of the companies that responded (Bell, Brewster, Curtiss, Grumman, Vought) only three contracts were awarded: Bell (XFL-1), Grumman (XF5F) and Vought (XF4U). All three prototypes first flew in 1940 and all three were over the 350 mph mark.

 
For the Italians - a combo between MC.202 and Re.2001? Japanese - something with Kinsei, or Kasei, or Ha-41?
 
Pretty much it is the Seafire/109 or nothing.

Throw in the "With useful range/radius." and even the Seafire/109 looks dubious.

The XFL-1 wasn't fast enough, had handling problems and needed work on the landing gear.

The delay in the Corsair was NOT due to lack of funds. Roosevelt had called for a 50,000 plane air force in the summer of 1940. The US was spending scores of millions on new factories in 1940. The Corsair needed hundreds of revisions AND the Navy had to rethink and abandon several of their acceptance tests for aircraft (like the 10 turn spin and recovery to both left and right and the terminal velocity dive).

Because a plane was evaluated for carrier use doesn't mean it was suitable. That is what the evaluation is for. Now standards do change and what was acceptable in 1943/44 was NOT acceptable in 1940/41.

For the Italians you have a problem, the MC.202 has a wing that is too small (and not enough fuel?) and Re.2001 which is too slow.
Try to cross them and ?????

The Japanese are behind the curve on engine power, the Kinsei, or Kasei, or Ha-41 engines of 1941 are hundreds of HP down on power compared to the versions available in 1943 and later.

It looks like, for liquid cooled engines 1150-1200hp is not enough to get the job done, you need more power. And for air cooled engines the need for even more power really limits the available engines.
 
I tossed in those historical types considered by the USN, because they were pretty much it, as far as potential candidates for Tomo's criteria.

What it boils down to, is that the U.S. really didn't have a better candidate by 1941, than the F4F-3. It's performance profile was better than the P-36A both in range and speed (and basic firepower layout) and it wouldn't be until the F4U worked out it's bugs and the introduction of the F6F, that the USN would have a truly potent fighter.

Even the P-51-NA would have had it's shortcomings if it had been adopted by the USN early on, and would not be ready for fleetwide service by 1941 in any case.
 

The British have the Merlin XX and 45, Germans have the DB 601N and 601E, so those should do the trick.

For the Italians you have a problem, the MC.202 has a wing that is too small (and not enough fuel?) and Re.2001 which is too slow.
Try to cross them and ?????
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The wing area of the MC 202 was some 180 sq ft, the Re.2001 was at ~220 sq ft - so yes, something with perhaps 200 sq ft wing?

The Japanese are behind the curve on engine power, the Kinsei, or Kasei, or Ha-41 engines of 1941 are hundreds of HP down on power compared to the versions available in 1943 and later.
Click to expand...

Ha-41 was with same ~1250 HP at 12100 ft in 1943 as it was in 1941; 1185 HP for take off.
The Ha-101 (Army nomencalture; member of Kasei family; installed on Sally bomber from early/mid 1940 on) was making 1360 HP at 13100 ft, and 1490 HP for take off.
Kinsei 46, installed on Mavis flying boat - 1055 HP at 13800 ft; 985 HP for take off.

For comparison - Sakae 12 (installed on early Zeroes) was with 935 HP at 13800 ft; 925 HP for take off. Pushed the Zeroes to 330 mph at best altitude.
 
I would have say RE 2000: first flight mid 1939, wing tanks and very good autonomy for the period, some flying caracteristics to iron out but quite acceptable, but with just 1000 HP and 286 kts, certainly not exactly a greyhound.
 
There were only a bare handful of 350 mph land based fighters in 1941. Lets count Spitfire, ME109 in service in numbers. The P38, P39 and P40 I don't think started being delivered until mid 1941 and even then, I think are all just in very small handfuls.
The P43 Lancer is about the only real 350 mph fighter the US could have had available in some quantity in 1941 and even though no other US fighter could compete with it above 20,000 feet, until the P38, we ironically, decided to not build but a few of them and not use them at all.(I'll concede that before the P43 was deployed to squadrons, they should at least have ditched the wet wing and used proper fuel tanks that didn't leak, self sealing would be even better)

Spitfires tended to fall apart after a few days of combat aboard a carrier. I wouldn't think an ME109 would be much of a carrier aircraft either, I mean by the time you took off from the carrier and got it up to 350 mph you would barely have enough fuel to get back and land.

I don't see any real hope for a 350 mph true carrier based fighter unless the US had developed the XF5F instead of the F4F-3 and even then I think it would have been later than your 1941 timeline unless some other priorities had been shifted around
 
Last edited:
pinsog said:
I wouldn't think an ME109 would be much of a carrier aircraft either, I mean by the time you took off from the carrier and got it up to 350 mph you would barely have enough fuel to get back and land.
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The Bf 109 with a drop tank is a rangy bird, even if it is no Zero or P-51. The 109G with DT was with range (not radius) of 1000 miles, or 616 without it.

I don't see any real hope for a 350 mph true carrier based fighter unless the US had developed the XF5F instead of the F4F-3 and even then I think it would have been later than your 1941 timeline unless some other priorities had been shifted around
Click to expand...

Grumman, when they lost (June 1938) the initial competition vs. the future Buffalo, decides to shelve the fighter that is designed with R-1830 in mind, and go for the whole hog, namely to ask P&W the specifics for their newest baby, the (X)R-2800, in order to design a fighter around it. Mock-up made by early 1939, prototype flown in early 1940, the serial production starts by early 1941?

If that is too aggresive, proposal #2: Grumman sees the loosing proposal as too big for the Twin Wasp, decides to cut the dimensions of fuselage & wings (wing area of 210 sq ft instead of 260 sq ft as in F4F-3/4), installs the fancy new Fowler flaps in order to keep low-speed handling acceptable. The 'Smallcat' makes 330 HP with 1-stage Twin Wasp, 350 mph with 2-stage Twin Wasp.
 
Here is a "what if". What if the R2800 had been a failure like several of the British engines and some of the American engines? Then you don't have a Hellcat in mid 1943, or a Corsair.

The Skyrocket and the Hellcat have the same top speed at sea level 312. At 17,000 feet, the Skyrocket is doing 357 on LESS hp than the Hellcat. At 17,000 the Hellcat is doing 357 on 1825 hp Military power while the Skyrocket is doing 357 on less than that because the Wright 1820-G231 were only rated 900 a piece up to 14,000 feet. So if the Skyrocket would do 357 on less than 1,800 hp, what would top speed be with 2,400 total hp (turbocharged 1820's) at that altitude? What would top speed be at 25,000 feet with 2,400 hp?

They could have had F6F performance with current, proven engines in 1941 with the Skyrocket and should have been able to substantially exceed Hellcat performance if they had installed the turbocharged Wright 1820. Im sure performance would have gone up even more if they had chosen P&W 1830's instead of the Wright 1820 because of less drag, the Wildcat and P36 were both better with the P&W.
 
Seafire III were the most reliable in the BPF, in 45 after the major shortcomings of the Seafire II were rectified. If a little mud sticks early on its hard to get off your boots . Range (effective combat radius) of the late war SeafireIII was s just under 200 miles. F6Fs with the BPF were about 220 miles, and Corsairs about 240miles.. There was bugger all difference in the range of the three types if you want to look at typical mission profiles.. The shortcoming of the seafire was that it lacked effective multi role capability, which the Lend lease fighters possessed. They were far superior down low and packed about twice as much firepower

Me109T was intended to carry a large capacity centreline droptank as standard. I don't know its effective combat range, but it would be considerably more than your stock LB 109

The narrow track LG of both the 109 and the seafire were about the same as the F4F. That wasn't the issue with Seafires early on, they had a weakness in one of the support struts that was easily rectified. All liquid cooled a/c have a real vision problem, but not insurmountable
 
It was not just the aircraft but the carriers and operating doctrine. It is no great trick to catapult small fighters into the air with drop tanks but range is not based on individual aircraft but the range of the group. First planes up have to orbit until the last planes are up. If the carrier only has two catapult s how long does it take to get the group in the air? The US planned on flying off, not catapult for a higher launch rate.
You are also back to operational radius depending on internal fuel for fighting, cruise home and a bigger reserve than land operations, you only have one landing "area" (task group) with a limited number of runways. You have to find it and then have enough fuel for ALL planes to land (including time out for several bad landings).
What is the range of the 109 with 10-15 minutes of combat and 30 minutes or more of reserves for finding the carrier and queuing up to land taken away from the internal fuel?
 
Nobody pretends that radius (it is no more 'range' when we talk about the fuel consumed in combat, plus the obvoius thing as return from combat) will be Zero-like with a drop-tank outfitted sea-going 109. But then the range/radius should be similar with Seafire that has a 90 gal DT, or Sea Hurricane with two 45 gal DTs. On some tests of the 109G-2, range figure with DT is mentioned as 1250 miles, endurance of 6 hours (link).
 
How do you guys think an ME109 would handle controlled crash landings on a carrier day after day?(Spitfire didn't like it)
How well would that tiny little fighter handle the weight gain of being navalized?
 
The light & small A5M Claude was conceived without requirement for carrier operations, and went to be unproblematic CV fighter. Light base weight means that modifications and reinforcements can also be lighter.
 
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