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I'm not sure he even did that. From all references I've seen, Bong didn't do much upon his arrival in the SWP until he went TDY with 39th. I think had he seen any combat in the P-40, be it training in a combat zone or during normal operations, it would have been well documented.Yeah I never said he had any claims in the P-40. As for 'in combat' I guess that depends what you mean, but I think you may be right. He flew them in a combat unit in a combat zone for a couple of months, but that didn't necessarily mean he encountered any enemy aircraft. So is that combat? I'm not sure. There were several (16) Japanese raids against Darwin during the time he was active there, but I think by then many if not most of them were at night? And P-40 isn't a night fighter.
The passage you quoted has pretty much the same timeline as the wiki.
And I wasn't taking it that way. My point was despite Bong being assigned to a P-40 unit, most evidence shows he never flew a P-40 within that unit at least during a combat or training sortie. Bong was hand picked by General Kenny and I believe (based on the many books I've read on this) Kenny wanted to make sure that Bong was going to utilize his talents in the combat aircraft he began his career with - that being the P-38.Anyway I wasn't trying to argue that Bong or McGuire were mainly P-40 or P-39 drivers...? Whatever their early experiences, their famous combat success was in the P-38.
Ah, we've been talking about the year 1943 for quite some time now Sortround, NOT 1942 lol!And the decision to outsource the F4F was made in early 1942?
Eastern Aircraft was born on Jan 21st 1942.
Preliminary talks had started with Republic and then talks shifted to Grumman and the Avenger. With the start of Eastern Aircraft they had two different planes they would be responsible for and instead of securing work for 3,000-4,000 workers at Linden NJ they wound up planning to use 5 different factories. 3 in New Jersey, one in New York and one in Maryland,
Letters of intent were filed on Feb 5 for the Avenger and Feb 9th for the WIldcat.
When they decided for Grumman to only build the F6F may have come later. The F6F was several months away from flying.
And the decision to outsource the F4F was made in early 1942?
Eastern Aircraft was born on Jan 21st 1942.
Preliminary talks had started with Republic and then talks shifted to Grumman and the Avenger. With the start of Eastern Aircraft they had two different planes they would be responsible for and instead of securing work for 3,000-4,000 workers at Linden NJ they wound up planning to use 5 different factories. 3 in New Jersey, one in New York and one in Maryland,
Letters of intent were filed on Feb 5 for the Avenger and Feb 9th for the WIldcat.
When they decided for Grumman to only build the F6F may have come later. The F6F was several months away from flying.
It also depends if we are talking about same timeline. If this is the case, there is no way that different airplane can be with operational units in 12-ish months from decision to produce it like it was with Boomerang. Different airplane will be with units lets say at the beginning of 1944 and even that is IMO optimistic.
Hawk was probably slightly better than Boomerang, by a narrow margin. But, you still get second line fighter at best in Hawk and you get them way more later than Boomerangs. I don't see the benefits.
Glosters could have been in theory produced, however both of them needed more developement and conversion to Twin Wasp (which Beaufigher needed too to be fair). Which means RAAF will get them even more later than Hawk.
My biggest fault with the boomerang is that it just didn't seem to have the potential to be a really good, or even moderately good fighter.
The Torpedo carrying Beaufighter versions began production in December 1942, the TF.X, though the first 60 are often called mark VI ITF (Intermediate Torpedo Fighter) the RAAF received some July/August 1943.Beaufighters are one of those aircraft which always seemed to be in short supply, but also always quite useful in action against the enemy. In the Pacific, Beaufighters seemed to often be able to evade destruction by Japanese fighters while wreaking havoc on merchant shipping and smaller military craft, and against troops etc. With room for the navigator, they were quite good maritime patrol aircraft, it seems, and as we know they did also have torpedo armed versions (not sure when precisely?).
In terms of combat units, HudsonAnother type which seemed to be very useful in Theater and in particular in Australian hands was the Hudson. This is the kind of plane you often overlook (or I used to) since it's performance wasn't that great, but when you read the day to day operational histories they seemed to be particularly good in Theater. They could bomb and strafe small shipping, attack submarines, do coastal patrol and recon, and like the Beaufighter, seemed to be fairly resilient against attacks by enemy fighter aircraft. They were often used as navigator or pathfinder aircraft which would lead fighters or bombers on raids to enemy targets, and as pretty reliable fast transports. I wonder if they could have made these in Australian factories?
The Australian industry was too small to keep up with the latest in design and production. The Boomerang with a 1,500+ HP class engine and supercharger would perform much better but the improvements could not be manufactured in Australia.My biggest fault with the boomerang is that it just didn't seem to have the potential to be a really good, or even moderately good fighter.
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Another type which seemed to be very useful in Theater and in particular in Australian hands was the Hudson. This is the kind of plane you often overlook (or I used to) since it's performance wasn't that great, but when you read the day to day operational histories they seemed to be particularly good in Theater. They could bomb and strafe small shipping, attack submarines, do coastal patrol and recon, and like the Beaufighter, seemed to be fairly resilient against attacks by enemy fighter aircraft. They were often used as navigator or pathfinder aircraft which would lead fighters or bombers on raids to enemy targets, and as pretty reliable fast transports. I wonder if they could have made these in Australian factories?
My biggest fault with the boomerang is that it just didn't seem to have the potential to be a really good, or even moderately good fighter. It seems to have made a decent ground attack aircraft, and on paper it looks like it could have been competitive as a fighter in this Theater, but it didn't seem to pan out that way (admittedly, I'm not an expert on it's operational history).
The Hawk had potential and may have ended up being made into it's own branch of the family so to speak, with better radial engines being introduced.
Wildcat I think also had a lot of potential.
The Gloster is more of a crap shoot but it looks very nice to me. If they could have gotten it working, and into production on some kind of accelerated timetable, it seems like it should have been worth having on the front lines!
The Northrop NP3 isn't anymore of a fighter than a Grumman Avenger or Fairley Barracuda is.good floatplane fighter
The Northrop NP3 isn't anymore of a fighter than a Grumman Avenger or Fairley Barracuda is.
I have a few doubts as to how accurate that wiki entry is.
And here we get to the heart of the matter.But the 12Y did seem to be popular (aside from French and other European aircraft, it was the basis for the Klimov 105 of course). You seem to disparage the Hispano 12Y a lot but from reading about French aircraft they had some in the pipeline which were quite powerful for the time, the 12Y-77 was supposed to be ~1,200 hp. All 12Y were light at ~1,080 lbs and had the (IMO very useful) trait of being fitted for a hub mounted 20mm cannon.
I strongly suggest a read of Sir Lawrence Wackett's autobiography "Aircraft Pioneer: an Autobiography" for the background into why the North American NA-16 was the basis for CAC's aircraft production/development.