Best Fleet Air Arm (Royal Navy) Aircraft of WW2

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Ground fire isn't but an easily disabled engine is. A liquid-cooled engine wasn't nearly as robust as an air-cooled one.
 
That is difficult to say. Many of the fastest piston-engined fighters used radials (Bearcat, Sea Fury, P-47M, F4U-4). In general, the in-line weighted less and produced less drag but they also produced less horsepower.
 
But not necessarily all. For example, the initial R-2800 was churning out 2,000hp. By the end of the war it was producing 2,850hp with water injection (equivalent to something like 1.75 Merlins) but without an increase in drag.
 
Lightning Guy said:
That is difficult to say. Many of the fastest piston-engined fighters used radials (Bearcat, Sea Fury, P-47M, F4U-4). In general, the in-line weighted less and produced less drag but they also produced less horsepower.

Fw-190 (not the Dora, that has an Inline with an annular radiator), Corsair, Japanese planes other than the Tony, Beau, Wildcat, Hellcat, many Ju-88 NF variants, La-5/7...
 
Well, I was pointing out just a few aircraft which were among the very fastest of the war. I never understood why the Germans used a for mounted radiator as it added drag and low-drag was the major advantage to a liquid-cooled engine.
 

what point are you trying to make??
 
Especially when you put the Wildcat in there.

The Spitfire, Lightning, Mustang all in-line and were some of the BEST planes of the war.
 
I don't deny that. But the common thought at the start of the war was that a radial-engined fighter couldn't compete with a inline-engined fighter. Clearly that wasn't the case.
 

My Father served on the HMS Indefatigable as an airframe fitter, before being transferred to Monab II HMS Nabberly in Australia to assemble Hellcats, Corsairs & Avengers for the Pacific fleet. He always said the old stringbags were good for cooling down the beer when crossing the Indian ocean. Apparently they would put a couple of crates of beer in the back of the Swordfish cockpit take off go up to 10 to 15,000 feet for a convoy observation flight and land with ice-cold beer. I have photos of him with Fireflys at Nabberly but he always said the Corsair was the better fighter & the Avenger the better torpedo bomber. There is a good photo of one Firefly that had an undercarriage failure on landing & bent the prop & underside up. The only reason the Royal Navy didn't continue to use the Corsairs & Avengers was that they were on 'Lend Lease' & had to be destroyed at the end of the War. My father said he nearly cried when dozens of aircraft he assembled were pushed of the end of the Carrier just off the Sydney Harbour.
Cheers.
 
If Fairey had built the Fulmar with a Vulture engine that worked and the Firefly with a Sabre engine that worked then both planes would have had a decent enough performance to compete with IJN single engine single seat fighters, but they didn't. Air frames great, engines under powered.
 
Neither Fulmar or Firefly was intended to compete with single engine fighters.
Firefly was a very capable dive bomber/attack aircraft, and a far better bomber interceptor than virtually any other DB aircraft.
 

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