Fireflies were actually more useful than their limited peformance might suggest. For a start they were a very effective carrier borne night fighter, and because they carried two crew could operate in conditions of poor weather far more effectively than single man aircraft.....compared to the RN, USN night and poor weather operating abilities were very limited, and this could be decisive in the poor conditions of the far northern atlantic (not a single American carrier operation ever took place on the northern route to Russia whereas the RN provided carrier based air cover on a regular basis to the Murmansk convoys).
Could you please post some facts about
a) night kills of Fulmars Fireflies
b) succesful poor weather attacks conducted by same two planes
They also had a very useful strike capability, and were far more survivable than any other strike aircraft.
Corsair's and Hellcat's pilots would disagree with such asumption, along with 10 other type's pilots.
With a crew of two, they were able to find targets very accurately in these poor visibility conditions.
Fair enough. But if their targets were planes, their low performance would handycap them, and crews of ships AAA would have less trouble with them, than with aforementoned US planes, among other.
Now, with regard to your theory about Sea Hurricanes in place of Fulmars, Hurricanes only became availble to the FAA after they were obsolete in the RAF. Ther was absolutely zero chance of even a single Hurricane being available for carrier operations until well into 1941.
Says who?
With Blackburn, Fairey, Boulton Paul Gloster NOT making Roc, Sea Gladiator and Fulmar, but instead Hurricanes/Sea Hurricanes, FAA suddenly has more planes than it could actually use. Not to mention that Yougoslavia Belgium received Hurricanes in 1939/40.
Moreover the ability to operate such high performance aircraft on and off carriers was not realized as possible until after the emrgency landings and takeoffs during the Norwegian campaign and also during the Malta re-supply operations. Even then it took some time to realize that SE fighters could operate and navigate effectively.
Who was to blame? Brass or planes?
Until well into 1941 normal procedure required the Hurricanes being flown to Malta being guided to the destination by the two seat Fulmars (if at all possible). Britain was slow to realize that in normal weather conditions single seat types could operate over water.
So we should again blame brass, not hi-performance planes.
Although I hasten to add that the Brits still found their two man aircraft useful in the often soupy conditions they were forced to operate in...RN aircraft demonstrated many times their superior ability to operate in poor weather conditions and at night, something facilitated by the two crew configuration....
It was only after the RN started to "americanise" its carrier doctrines that single seat aircraft became useful. This meant that night operations and poor weather operation capability was abandone in favour of the massed daylight strike approach being used to great effect in the Pacific. However it also meant a loss of flexibility and capability, as the ability to operate at night and in poor weather, such as the RN demonstrated in its great victories at Taranto and against the Bismarck was greatly reduced after 1942, after the RN started to adopt the "mass production" pilot training techniques of the USN
Now what Swordfish achievements have to do with FAA purchasing hi-performance fighters early enough?
.