Best naval fighter

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There really is no doubt about it: Next to the Seafire the best Naval plane of WW2 was the F4U Corsair (but only cos we British helped the Yanks build it)
 
You are right, the Americans did build it BUT they kept crashing the prototype because the nose of the plane was too long and the pilots trying to land on a thin, moving landing strip (i.e an aircraft carrier) couldn't see what they were doing and ended up in the drink half the time (you'll notice that the Corsair DOES have a very long nose and the cockpit is situated quite far back) the Americans couldn't figure it out and were thinking about scrapping the whole thing and redesigning the plane but luckily the fleet air arm of the Royal Navy (i.e Britain) saw the promise of the plane and got involved. We sent engineers to look at the plane for the yanks. Unfortunately i don't know any more details about it but i know we sorted the problem for them - i'm sure if you look it up on-line you'll see that i'm correct.
 
yup, you are, the brittish combatted the problem by not coming in from straight behind, at more of an angle, then straighten out at the last minuite
 
Don't forget the Brits chopped 8 inches off each wing tip which also decreased the bounce (unepectedly), which was also a big problem.
 

Yep, you're 100% right, M8 8)

Hot Space
 
that would have been a real loss... we would have to use hellcats which are tough manuverable very good bomb load (2000lb bomb and 6rockets) but it cant even reach 400mph and we would keep getting our asses kicked my A6M5 if u dont know what that is look it up!
 
Well i know it was the first fighter in history to exceed 400mph so it might have had the biggest engine...its propeller is pretty big but i'm not sure if its the biggest - its a huge plane though so it could be!
 
You've got good taste Knight Hawk

Actually, the P-38 broke 400 mph before the Corsair, the Corsair was the first single-engine plane to do so. The R-2800 Double Wasp was also used by the Hellcat and P-47, but niether had the 13 foot 4 inch (IIRC) diameter prop.

The Americans actually wanted the Corsair quite badly since Wildcats weren't exactly good against Zeroes, and they put it into service with the Marines originally. There was also VF-12 and VF-17 that used and got carrier qualified with Corsairs. VF-12 switched to Hellcats however and VF-17 became a landbased squadron due to lack of the necessary supply infrastructure.

Hellcats actually were designed to beat the Zero. From information gathered from the Zero in American hands (from Attu Island I believe) the Hellcat was made to kill it, which it did quite well. The Hellcat only got its chance to fight though due to the Corsair's initial problems with carries unless I'm mistaken. It was a good fighter, but was ugly IMO (not quite as much as the Mustang )
 
Actually the Hellcat more than held its own against the Japanese Zero fighters. In fact the highest scoring American Ace of the war scored most of his kills flying a Hellcat in the Pacific theatre
 
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