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The Royal Navy drove the development of aircraft by laying the specifications as the customer. Just as the US, Germany, Japan, etc. drove development by writing specifications for what they desired. I stand by the customer driving development.
My bad on the Swordfish (Outside of the Pacific Ocean.) But in flew in 1934 and i specifically omitted as it predated my 1935 cut-off date. The Sea Hornet? Don't know enough about it. Seafire? No, horrendous non-combat attrition.
Relating back to my original post, did the UK have the engineering, material, and human resources to allocate to the "Sea Hurricane" from 1938-1940?
The simple answer is there was not enough excess capacity to do the project. Let's look at folding the wings, we need to
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Relating back to my original post, did the UK have the engineering, material, and human resources to allocate to the "Sea Hurricane" from 1938-1940?.
Yes. Discussions about the use of either the hurricane or the spitfire as a carrier borne fighter had been in progress since at least 1938. The stickin goint was the RAF. They did not want any interruption or deviation of production away from land based air. But as war broke out factories normally used for production of naval aircraft were used to supplement traditional sources of production anyway.
Actually, what I'm saying is that the UK simply did not have the excess engineering and manufacturing capabilities to develop every engineering proposal that came along.
Neither did the US in 1938
The UK was far more resource constrained than the US. Programs such as the Albermarle, Botha, Lerwick were under development and a higher priority.
Not in 1938-40. UK production in 1940 amounted to over 16000 aircraft whilst US production languished at just over 2000. Nearly all of those 2000 were failures because of the backwardness of the supporting industry and R&D in the US at that time. Not until substantial amounts of (mostly) British cash to set up US production and massivce amounts of technical support provided was the US able to shift to a war footing. Case in point has to be the P-51....powered by a british designed engine and development assisted by British knopw how.
My entire post was related to internal politics, production and engineering resources.
Your entire post was defined by glib one liners, misinformation and downright baloney, self serving and designed for a particular outcome.
I wasn't saying US aircraft were better.
You implied it, and from there made a whole bunch of spurious statements
I was saying the US had the engineering and production capacity to absorb a mistake.
They didn't have much capacity in 1938-40, but they also were not in a war situation. it didn't matter that in that period most of the aircraft they built were utter dogs ,
The British did not.
Yes they did, which they used to haul the US aircraft industry into the modern age.
My bad on the Swordfish (Outside of the Pacific Ocean.) But in flew in 1934 and i specifically omitted as it predated my 1935 cut-off date.
So, all the numerous and major development of the Swordfish up to 1943 doesn't count. Too bad about that, since it remained the best carrier borne strike aircraft in poor weather conditions throughout the war and was responsible for more sinking more than 50 submarines (including some 30 Uboats).
Seafire? No, horrendous non-combat attrition.
Seafire IIIs with proper training, aboard fleet carriers (rather than Goback escort carriers in still air in the med that it was forced to operate from in 1943) enjoyed the lowest attrition rate of the three main types embarked (Hellcat, corsair and seafire) in 1945.
You don't know what you are talking about.
'Driving the development' and 'developing' are not same things. Don't know enough about Sea Hornet?
BTW, what was wrong with Skua as a dive bomber - that it was not a biplane like the 1st Helldiver, or that it didn't have fixed U/C lake the later Aichi 'Val'?
Any numbers to back up the claim that Seafire's non-combat attrition was horrendous?
Seafire: Avalanche and Torch
Where was proven, without the shadow of the doubt, that 'the simple answer' is negative?
Actually, what I'm saying is that the UK simply did not have the excess engineering and manufacturing capabilities to develop every engineering proposal that came along.
Neither did the US in 1938
The UK was far more resource constrained than the US. Programs such as the Albermarle, Botha, Lerwick were under development and a higher priority.
Not in 1938-40. UK production in 1940 amounted to over 16000 aircraft whilst US production languished at just over 2000. Nearly all of those 2000 were failures because of the backwardness of the supporting industry and R&D in the US at that time. Not until substantial amounts of (mostly) British cash to set up US production and massivce amounts of technical support provided was the US able to shift to a war footing. Case in point has to be the P-51....powered by a british designed engine and development assisted by British knopw how.
Lets not go too far the other way.
Yep, the backwardness of the US using constant speed propellers on large numbers of those 2000 failure aircraft as opposed the British using fixed pitch and two speed propellers.
BTW the US built 1685 fighters in 1940, some of them were rubbish, some were 2nd tier, none equaled the Spitfire but then the majority of fighters built in Britain in 1940 were not Spitfires. Now how many bombers, both land and carrier, how many patrol planes, how many military trainers (not Piper Cubs ) did the US build in 1940???
I must have missed the massive amounts of technical support the US got in order to build Martin Maylanders, Lockheed Hudsons and Douglas Havocs/Boston's starting in 1939.
All that aid and technical knowhow that Bristol and Armstrong Siddeley gave to Pratt & Whitney and Wright?
The R&D that Saro, Supermarine and Shorts gave to Consolidated for the PBY (First flight 28 March 1935) the Consolidated PB2Y Coronado the Martin PBM (First flight 18 February 1939) is a little hard to find.
Come on Parsifal, you are better than this. US production may not have been large but the US engineers were not a bunch of bumpkins wandering in the wilderness waiting for enlightenment from the UK.
You might want to check were a lot the machine tools that equipped the British shadow factories came from.
The simple answer is too be found in the numbers of aircraft produced and the report by Roy Fedden to Sir Wilford Freeman on US aircraft production.
One-liner like this is not going to prove many of the points you've written here.
I'm sorry, I assumed you would be familiar with the Fedden report. My apologies.
Here, please let me recondense back down to this;
1. Excess production capacity, the Brewster Buccaneer failed,the SB2C was almost a failure. The USN had the TBF/TBM and was building a factory for the Vought TBY. That's four programs where metal was cut and three programs that reached production!
That's why British production topped out in the mid-20's. It just wasn't do-able. The mythical Sea Hurricane? Given all the other programs and priorities assigned by Freeman and his predecessors, (Remember the Sea-Hurricane was in service till '44.) it just wasn't do-able with the resources available.
Nice theory but the facts don't quite back it up. Brewster made a total hash of just about anything they tried to produce. Why did the Navy order the F4F? because they already had doubts about Brewsers ability to deliver on time. Brewster's record on the F4U Corsair was also pretty dismal. Started before Goodyear as the 2nd source and Goodyear consistently beat then to first flight and in benchmarks of pance produced. Curtiss needed massive plant expansions to handle war time production The P-40s were built in Buffalo, the SB2C was built in a brand new factory in Cleveland Ohio, Until the factory is built Curtiss had no spare capacity. Grumman built quite a few TBFs but the the TBMs were built by Eastern AIrcraft, a group of plants built and managed by General Motors for the US government to free up the Grumman home factory for Hellcat production.
Which again proves my point, you had a completely screwed up manufacturer in Brewster. But other plants (And supply chains!) were still being constructed for other aircraft I mentioned. I would also consider the TBY/TBU be partial failure and we still built a plant for it in PA. We could simultaneously develop new aircraft, build and staff plants for them, or concurrently build new plants to shift production over for new aircraft like the F6F. The British could not.
British production did not top out back in the 20s.
My books show max the max quantity of aircraft produced in Britain as just over 26K in 1944. Is that mid 20's?
The aircraft of the RN were controlled by the RAF almost until the last moments before WWII, austere budgets, a customer that was reluctant to develop new technology aircraft, obsolete specifications, etc.
British production did not top out back in the 20s.
My books show max the max quantity of aircraft produced in Britain as just over 26K in 1944. Is that mid 20's?
Here we go again. Ground pounders getting in the way of naval affairs. How did the "senior service" let this happen?Discussions about the use of either the hurricane or the spitfire as a carrier borne fighter had been in progress since at least 1938. The stickin goint was the RAF. They did not want any interruption or deviation of production away from land based air.
Mid 20s thousands produced per year, not mid 1920s, right? A tad confusing there.That's why British production topped out in the mid-20's.
So why, when it came to modern designs, was this shunned in favour of combining the requirement with a dive bomber, producing the Skua or a long range two-seater in the Fulmar? Although available, the Gloster Sea Gladiator wasn't that much far removed from the Nimrod it replaced; it's shore based original specification even predated that which produced the Swordfish.
There definitely was a tendency to stick with a conservative approach to progress, if that's what the Admiralty's approach could be described as. The Fairey Albacore is evidence of this; although very much an improvement over the Fairey Swordfish and Blackburn Shark (both contemporaries and very similar in performance and capability), but was still a throwback compared to the Grumman Tarpon (nee Avenger and to be renamed as such because Tarpon just doesn't cut it as an emotive appellation) that the Admiralty controlled FAA ordered to supplement and fulfill requirements that the British industry could not, again, largely because of the previous misfires of its own board in the production of naval aircraft specifications.
Leaving aside the barely adequate but well liked Fulmar for a moment, that the Sea Hurricane was an interim was a given. It's acquisition was also more of a knee-jerk reaction however, despite work by Hawker prior to the war's outbreak, and it certainly wasn't ideal either. Brown describes it as thus in the introduction on the chapter on the Sea Hurricane in Wings of the Navy;
"Short on range, with the ditching propensities of a submarine, harsh stalling characteristics, a very mediocre view for deck landing and an undercarriage that was as likely as not to bounce it over the arrestor wires. What less likely a candidate for deployment aboard aircraft carriers as a single-seat fighter than the Hurricane could have been imagined when, more than two score years ago, the FAA found itself at war! Yet, legacy of parsimony, expediency and short sightedness inflicted on British naval aviation of the 'thirties through its seagoing assignment two years later undoubtedly was, the Hurricane was to take to the nautical environment extraordinarily well. Its shipboard debut was to give the FAA an enormous fillip, and while no fighter designed solely with shore-based operation in mind could have expected unqualified success at sea, it was to aquit itself with distinction during its brief navial first-line career."
The last surviving Fulmar. It's a big aeroplane for a fighter.
Even by 1939, the FAA's future fighter requirements did not match what was really required, but again, as has been stated in another thread, pre-war requirements were laid down without the benefit of post war experience and foresight. Both N.8/39 and N.9/39, calling for a two-seater, front gun fighter and a two-seater single engined turret fighter showed promise but again, fell short of the mark in terms of what was really needed. N.8/39 was fulfilled by the rugged and successful Fairey Firefly, but it saw action primarily as an attack aircraft (let's not even mention the FAA's turret fighter du jour the Blackburn Roc!).
A year later, with the war in full swing and with a year's vital experience under its belt, the Admiralty finally released OR.88 for a single seat naval fighter. This became hardware through specification N.11/40 for a single seat front gun fighter (at last), to which the the over-engineered and much maligned Blackburn Firebrand was designed. It was the first British purpose buiIt single-seat naval fighter for the FAA, but didn't fly for the first time until 27 February 1942. Sure, that Blackburn, producers of a successful line of naval aircraft, beginning with the Swift of 1919 was to fail miserably with the Firebrand can't be blamed on the Admiralty, it did demonstrate that the British industry needed to devote more effort to modern single seat naval fighter requirements than it had because of the absense of a viable requirement. It wasn't as easy as the old throwback of converting a land based fighter for sea service, as experience with the Sea Hurricane showed.
Why doesn't the RN get any Kudos for this triumph of naval strike aircraft design?
The Albacore predated the TBF by many years and even the Fairey Barracuda flew before the TBF and SB2C, yet unlike Grumman and Curtiss Fairey's plants were being bombed.
but we all tend not to dwell on failed USN designs but in the same breath wonder how the RN got it so wrong.
I'm sorry, I assumed you would be familiar with the Fedden report. My apologies.
Here, please let me recondense back down to this;
1. Excess production capacity, the Brewster Buccaneer failed,the SB2C was almost a failure. The USN had the TBF/TBM and was building a factory for the Vought TBY. That's four programs where metal was cut and three programs that reached production! What excess capacity did the British have? (Who was going to assemble the new and improved Sea Hurricane?)
Tell me, could the UK build multiple factories for 4 concurrent dive/torpedo bomber programs, and fully staff them with engineers and production workers?
Apparently not, because British production quantities would not have stagnated in the mid-20's from 1942 onward and more Barracudas, Seafires and Hurricanes would be on the deck.
I'm not being critical of British Aircraft. I am however critical of British procurement policies in regards to developing naval aircraft. You must admit that the RN was extremely conservative in their specifications and this prevented the development of more advanced naval aircraft.
But more importantly, We should recognize the constraints placed upon the British industry which are borne out by the production numbers. It's not a slam on anyone's national pride.
Do you mind if I quote S L A Marshall? (US Army Historian.) It's geared towards combat, but logistically speaking also rings true.
The will does not operate in a vacuum. It cannot be imposed successfully if it runs counter to reason. Things are not done in war primarily because a man wills it; they are done because they are do-able. The limits for the commander in battle are defined by the general circumstances. What he asks of his men must be consistent with the possibilities of the situation.
That's why British production topped out in the mid-20's. It just wasn't do-able. The mythical Sea Hurricane? Given all the other programs and priorities assigned by Freeman and his predecessors, (Remember the Sea-Hurricane was in service till '44.) it just wasn't do-able with the resources available.