Allied Fighter vs Fighter: Is it really necessary ???

The main problem with the turret fighter is that dogfighting hadn't been part of its design.

The idea of a non deflection bomber kill shot was top.

The Germans agreed and schrage muzik was born.

The Basket said:

The main problem with the turret fighter is that dogfighting hadn't been part of its design.

The idea of a non deflection bomber kill shot was top.

The Germans agreed and schrage muzik was born.

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I agree and in the context of this thead conversation the schrage musik was used by Ju88 Bf110 and Do217 which were never designed to use it either

In 1940, the XF4U was the first single engine fighter to exceed 400 mph in level flight in the US so they knew they had something special. In March, 1941, the Navy issued a letter of intent for a production F4U1 and in June 1941, a contract was issued for 584 F4U1s but the first flight of the production F4U1 did not take place until June 25, 1942. It seems that all knew the Corsair would be a winner but if more resources were devoted to it the AC could have been ready much sooner.

To me, what is interesting is comparing the Hellcat which was an evolutionary airplane to the Corsair which was more revolutionary. Of course the Corsair was an earlier design but the comparison shows how aircraft design is always a compromise and there ain't no free lunch.

The Hellcat and Corsair were about the same size and weight and both used the same engine. Both companies wanted the fuel tank to be centered over the CG and both companies wanted the CL(center of lift) to coincide closely with the CG. Grumman placed a lot of emphasis on pilot forward visibility and wanted the airplane to be stable at low speeds for ease of carrier landings. That meant that they mounted the cockpit perched high and had the fuel tank under the pilot. The Hellcat also had a large wing with a lot of lift.

Vought was more interested in high performance and chose to make the fuselage cross section as small as possible for less drag. So the cross section was only as large as the engine which meant the fuel tank was mounted over the wing and the CG but the cockpit had to be behind the fuel tank, not on top of it which really reduced pilot forward visibility. The Corsair also had less wing area than the Hellcat.

All these compromises resulted in the Hellcat being a nice carrier landing airplane with good low speed handling and good visibility but with a lot of drag which extracted a performance penalty. The Corsair was more tricky at low speeds and had poor pilot visibility but was faster, climbed better, accelerated better and rolled better. Both had good range.

It was just very hard to design a shipboard fighter that had all the virtues. The fact that the Corsair evolved into one of the premier piston engine fighters in history and turned out to be a fine shipboard airplane showed what an inspired design it was.

Colin1 said:

As evidenced
by the early use of F4Us from land-based strips. They may not be dedicated Dave, but they're certainly specialised - how long do you think un-navalised P-51s or P-47s would last bouncing in on a carrier?

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I never said that there was not a dedicated land based fighter, only no dedicated Naval aircraft. Any Navy plane can be used on the land, except, of course, float planes, but the reverse is not true.

Something to consider when putting forth the idea that the Corsair for European use was that the Corsair really couldn't do the job of the P-38 or P47. The P-51 is a bit later in timing.

The Air Corp was committed to the idea of using bombers with turbocharged engines flying at high altitude (25,000-30,000ft?) as it's main strike force.
To combat enemy developments along those lines (hypothetical, but in 1939-41 who knew that the Germans wouldn't, couldn't develop high altitude bombers in numbers). In 1939-41 this pretty much meant using turbo charged engines.

While the Corsair did fly in May of 1940 it was a rather different airplane than the production F4U-1. It also was flying with a single stage supercharger and not the two stage supercharger of the production models. First production contract wasn't placed until June of 1941. The famous 405mph flight wasn't made until October 1 of 1940. The Army had already placed contracts for 773 P-47s (split between 'B' and 'C' models) just over two weeks earlier.
I don't know who was promising what when, but the early versions of the R-2800s used in the F4U-1 and the early P-47s were both rated for 2000hp for take-off. however the mechanical drive two stage supercharger on the Corsair had a Military rating of 1650hp at 22,500ft compared to the 2000hp at 25,000ft rating for the turbo engine used in the P-47. Nobody was using WER ratings or water injection at this point.
I would also be rather careful in comparing combat radius or range. Many ranges for the Corsair are given at low altitudes (high drag) but low speeds (one source gives a cruise of 178mph) but at that altitude the 1st stage of the supercharger is disconnected and not using any power giving better economy than at higher altitude.
Some contract dates for the P-38 are Apr 27 1939 for 13 YP-38s. Aug 10 1939 for 66 P-38s. Mar 1940 for 143 model 322s for the British (without turbos). Jun 5 1940 US approval is given for a British second order for 524 Lighting MK 2s with turbos. Aug 30 1940 US Army orders another 607 P-38s.
Canceling or dropping P-38 development/production in favor of the Corsair is going to give you NO high performance fighters in 1941 and most of 1942. Given the time from placing of orders until planes were actually produced and then the months between first production and first combat use you would need to speed things up considerably to get Corsairs in numbers in the fall of 1942. 178 Corsairs had been accepted by the Navy by Dec 31 1942.
you also have the problem that Lockheed is in southern California and Chance Vought was in Connecticut, almost 3000 miles away. Moving workers/engineers around would be difficult and communications between the factories would be slow. Telephone/telegraph is one thing but commercial air travel took around 24 hours one way and trains took 4-5 days one way.
Yes the British did manage to set up factories in Canada and Australia but it was more a matter of being sent plans and patterns for an existing aircraft (and adapting them to local conditions) than trying to develop a new aircraft.

The Mission for the P-38 and P-47 changed from interceptor to general fighter to long range escort. While the anticipated German high altitude bombers failed to show up in any numbers the fighters shifted over to the escort mission.

To properly escort the bomber formations was going to require fighters that could not only fly but fight at 30,000-35,000 ft to prevent enemy fighters from getting on top of the bomber formations. In the 1942-43 time frame this pretty much required turbo chargers for the fighter engines. The two stage Merlins being in rather short supply at this point.

While it may be easy to say, with the benefit of hindsight, what could/should have been done it may have been a lot harder at the time. The Actual mission the planes performed were often different than what the original design requirement called for. Planes went into combat 2-4 years after design work started. Without some real numbers or reports from the time it is very hard to tell how changes in priorities/allocations of engineering staff, workers, materials, tooling would have affected production. Some companies performed minor miracles of production while short of everything while others (Brewster and Curtiss) seemed to have real trouble turning out production numbers of certain types pf aircraft.

i can't even approach the expertise all of you posses but i agree with post #2 by drgondog. i really don't think it mattered what plane was flown. it was the US ability to outmanufacture germany and japan that turned the tide.. with US industry fully geared up and protected from any type of air, land, or water attack we could make more of anything that the germans or japanese destroyed. a superior german aircraft couldn't be produced fast enough, maintained fast enough, or kept fueled well enough to make any difference

Great responses to my original post everyone

Interesting how a few here think we may have had too Many fighter designs to choose from
That really the allies may have been able to get by with say Mustangs and Corsairs I find is an Interesting argument

I personally think your in a better position if you have more aircraft design type options than not enough

Really Germany only really had two fighters to pick from. Both of those (109/190) are very similar in concept
Both have the same design philosophy in they are both small compact fighters with one Radial the other inline
In fact you could argue that Germany had one real main stay fighter if where talking numbers produced with the 109

Just imagine the allies where in the same position as Germany and had only one descent fighter design to choose from. Say example the Spitfire. It would have been a nightmare trying to design a Spitfire to perform all the rolls that had to be filled like long range escorts,ground support,Carrier duties

Just an example as to why we where so fortunate to have so many great variations in fighter designs

mikewint said:

i can't even approach the expertise all of you posses but i agree with post #2 by drgondog. i really don't think it mattered what plane was flown. it was the US ability to outmanufacture germany and japan that turned the tide.. with US industry fully geared up and protected from any type of air, land, or water attack we could make more of anything that the germans or japanese destroyed. a superior german aircraft couldn't be produced fast enough, maintained fast enough, or kept fueled well enough to make any difference

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The Quality of the aircraft (or tank or ship) does matter somewhat. Otherwise you are trying to make targets faster than the Germans/ Japanese could make ammo.

Try imagining the US conducting bombing raids over Germany in 1944 using hundreds of Early B-17s (without power turrets) escorted by P-36s with drop tanks. Even the US might have been hard pressed to keep up with the loss ratio that would have entailed.

A few points...

The 109/190 are not the same concept...

The American war machine could build anything all day long in huge numbers very quickly. They were also able to bring on a new aircraft and fix the bugs. The B-29 is a classic example. Only the Americans could have built a machine so complex so quickly.

Yamamoto didn't fear American fighting spirit or Corsairs...he feared the production capabilities that the
Usa had

While not so tech minded as some posts here, my take on the whole thing is this....

Fighter design and specialized roles for aircraft was an ongoing, developing area during the war. If you look at the history of planes after WWI you will find that most thinking was fighter vs fighter. Bomber theory was the money-maker so most countries played around with that concept while leaving fighter designlooking at speed and armament.

WWII made everyone start to look at the specialized roles needed for the different theatres ad thats why the many designs.

But - its one thing to develop a design and test free from bombs dropping on your head. Whereas USA was isolated and could freely test new planes completely, Germany was under a boot heel so to speak, and new planes were very difficult to bring to operational staus. USA could waste its time on testing while Germany could hardly properly do it. So instead of concentrating on what was needed they scrambled with half done designs and falling back on old ons. The 219 Moskito might have been a winner if the glue factories weren't bombed and proper time to iron out bugs been ok. USA never had this problem - discounting Brewster!

At most economical cruise speed the yardstick ranges with internal fuel only for the F4U1, and P47C and early D were:
F4U1 1596 miles
P47C and early D 835 miles
Combat range would have been roughly 70%-80% of the yardstick ranges.
An AAF graph shows the P47D with 307 gallons of internal fuel to have a combat radius of 125 miles, the P47D with 370 gallons of internal fuel had a combat radius of 225 miles. The altitude for these profiles was 25000 feet so it is obvious that the P47 took a lot of fuel to get to that altitude.

The early F4U1 at military power got it's Vmax of around 395 mph at 23000 feet. It's service ceiling was 36900 feet. later water injection and combat power boosted it's Vmax to 417 mph. The Corsair was no slouch at high altitudes and few bomber missions early in the war were flown above 25000 feet with the majority, especially with B24s being flown well below that. ACM regularly was well below 30000 feet.

The early Corsair IF AVAILABLE would have been a desirable substitution for the P47 or P38,( which did not do well in the early going in the ETO) IMO however......

As far as timing of when which AC was ready is concerned, I stated early on that an infallible crystal ball was needed and since those crystal balls were heavily rationed just like tires and gasoline in WW2, this is all a fantasy.

1,596 for F4U1? Are you sure about that - Vought themselves only list a little over 1,000.

most of the German pilots were sent to operational units with less then 80 hours flying time

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That has nothing to do with manpower. From June 1941 onward Germany did not have enough aviation gasoline.

According to David Glantz German 6th Air Fleet had only 2/3rds of the aviation fuel required to support the Kursk Offensive. If such a high priority combat force was short on fuel I expect Luftwaffe training command got practically nothing at the time. You cannot train fighter pilots using gliders and WWII era flight simulators. They need fuel.

VB, that is from page 600, Dean, "America's Hundred Thousand" and is a table of max ranges Navy fighters. How they get it is they take the amount of fuel and divide by the fuel burn at the most economical speed and the cruise altitude is 5000 feet and the internal fuel is 361 gallons which includes the fuselage tank, protected and wing tanks unprotected. The reason it is called yardstick range is that it is for comparison purposes only.

To get an idea of what combat radius that would represent is to divide by two which is roughly 750 and take about 80% which is about 600 miles. That combat radius would depend on the mission profile.

The yardstick range for the P47 D late/M is at 10000 feet with 370 gallons internal and is 1020 miles which would give a combat radius of roughly 400 miles.

timmy said:

Just imagine the allies where in the same position as Germany and had only one descent fighter design to choose from. Say example the Spitfire. It would have been a nightmare trying to design a Spitfire to perform all the rolls that had to be filled like long range escorts,ground support,Carrier duties

Just an example as to why we where so fortunate to have so many great variations in fighter designs

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In fact the Spitfire was, perhaps, the only fighter aircraft that was designed and then redesigned, to fulfil requirements as a long range escort,ground support fighter and for Carrier duties.

It is interesting to speculate what would have happened if the Allies had suspended all other fighter development, say in 1939, and concentrated solely on the Spitfire. What if the Grumman design team, for example, was freed to concentrate on navalizing the Spitfire?

Suppose the USAAF had built only the Spitfire and poured resources into developing a long range Spitfire, earlier? Certainly the Spitfire could achieve extremely long range:
http://www.spitfireperformance.com/spitfire9-fuelsystem-lr.jpg
and the range with this mod was equivalent to the Mustang.

renrich said:

VB, that is from page 600, Dean, "America's Hundred Thousand" and is a table of max ranges Navy fighters. How they get it is they take the amount of fuel and divide by the fuel burn at the most economical speed and the cruise altitude is 5000 feet and the internal fuel is 361 gallons which includes the fuselage tank, protected and wing tanks unprotected. The reason it is called yardstick range is that it is for comparison purposes only.

To get an idea of what combat radius that would represent is to divide by two which is roughly 750 and take about 80% which is about 600 miles. That combat radius would depend on the mission profile.

The yardstick range for the P47 D late/M is at 10000 feet with 370 gallons internal and is 1020 miles which would give a combat radius of roughly 400 miles.

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The RAE/RAF used a different method and it is detailed on the aircraft data cards:
so you can compare the range of the Mustang III
http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/mustang/mustang-III-ads-3.jpg
with a Spitfire VIII
http://www.spitfireperformance.com/spitfirehfviii-ads.jpg
as both ranges are calculated using the same methodology.

RCAFson said:

and the range with this mod was equivalent to the Mustang.

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There is an error in your assumptions of Spitfire range vs. Mustang range and it is based on the data you provided. The internal fuel of the Mustang III in the report is 150 gallons, (UK). This is the amount of internal fuel, all wing tanks, of the P-51A and some P-51Bs. It does not include the 85 gallons (U.S) fuselage tank in the majority of P-51B and Ds. Apparently, the British Mustang IIIs did not provide the fuselage tank, the one the data page references certainly did not. An accurate comparison, converted to U.S gallons and the requirement to burn off some fuel from the fuselage tanks (est. 20 gallons), of the P-51B to the Spitfire data page would be; internal fuel P-51, 249 gallons, Spitfire (data page), 144 gallons, and Spitfire (drawing schematic) 194 gallons. It is apparent that the P-51B/D carried substantially more internal fuel than either version of the Spitfire, or, 105 gallons more for the first and 55 gallons more for the latter (for a comparison, this is half the fuel load of a Bf-109).

Internal fuel is critical for an escort fighter. When combat is initiated all external fuel is normally jettisoned. That means that the fighter now must fight with internal fuel but not use the fuel required to go home. I estimated in a previous thread that the P-51 would get about .6 minute of combat for each gallon used. This would equate to an additional hour of combat for the P-51 over the Spitfire version on the data sheet and an additional 30 minutes of combat time for the P-51 over the Spitfire version in the tank drawing. In addition, according to the data provided, the P-51 is 11% more fuel efficient so it would not need the same amount of fuel for the home trip, thus increasing its time on target.

It is apparent that, while the two versions of the Spitfire would be capable of the escort mission (the first marginal), their time on target would be significantly less. Also, since the Spitfire in the drawing has aft tanks like the P-51 fuselage tanks, some cg fuel burn off, like the Mustang, might apply, again affecting time on target.

Even the Mustangs had to use drop tanks until they engaged to maximize combat flight time.

As far as the Seafires, the Royal Navy also used carrier based Corsairs both in the PTO and ETO. It was acutally the Brits who figured out how to land it on carriers. Until then the US used it as a land based fighter. I think they had a total of 18 (maybe 19 or 20) squadrons of Corsairs.

Earlier and I'm sorry I didn't qoute. A comparision of the F4-U and the P-47D were compared. I think the F4U-1 was used and not the F4U-4. Which might have been closer in terms of when they entered service(P-47D and F4U-4). In that case the numbers would look a bit different.

F4U-4
Range 1000 miles (w/out Drop tank)
Speed 446 mph (couldn't find the alt @)
Climb rate 3870 ft/min.
Ceiling 41,500 ft.

P-47D
Range 800 miles (w/out drop tanks)
Speed 433 (@30K ft)
Climb rate 3120/ft min.
Ceiling 43,000 ft.

And not to mention:

P-51D
Range 1650 miles (w/drop tanks - couldn't find range w/out)
Speed 437 (sorry again no alt).
Climb rate 3200 ft/min.
Ceiling 41,000 ft.

I know.. I know.. Speed at Alt matters

I think these numbers might give a bit better comparision. If someone wanted to dig up roll, and turn rates it would make it even more interesting. IMHO I think the Corsair is a better dog fighter than either, but not as good at ground attack at the Jug. With the P-51 being the least in ground attack and rated between the others as a dog fighter.

I DO think that those numbers at altitiude are what's going to set them apart. Most of the combat the Corsair took place in wasn't at 30-40k (again I could be wrong, and don't have access to anything like those numbers).

I'd assume some of you out there have access to better numbers and more knowledge than I do when it comes to this.

Sadly we just can't pull them out the hangers and let them fight it out.


** Now of course I have a found a thread and just made my post soo out of date ***

davebender said:

The Fw-190 series was a high performance but relativley expensive fighter. The Me-109 was dirt cheap yet still had acceptable performance. I don't know if it was accidental or intentional but Germany adopted the High-Low doctrine used by the modern day U.S.A.F. This gives you the most bang for the buck.

Fw-190 equates to F-15
Me-109 equates to F-16

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Actually I find this a pretty good parellel. They had very versatile and adoptable airframe for many roles with the 190, which excelled at practically everything but as a high altitude fighter. For that role they already had the 109, which could also function reasonably well in other duties. For bomber and night fighter duties, they had the Ju 88, probably the most versatile airframe of the whole war.. they certainly did not need naval fighters, for the lack of a naval air arm, nor longer ranged fighters than the 109/190.

Njaco said:

The 219 Moskito might have been a winner if the glue factories weren't bombed and proper time to iron out bugs been ok. USA never had this problem - discounting Brewster!

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Shouldn't that be Ta154 Moskito? The 219 from Heinkel was an all metal a/c.

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