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Maybe the conversion of British RAF types to a carrier role was to quote Winkle Brown "When needs must the devil drives". In another thread the discussion was as to the origin of the F8F "Beer Cat". Certainly the Grumman team was inspired to a new direction in checking out the FW190, but it was immediately apparent that other than trying to keep the general size and power, and especially the weight, a very different design would be necessary to optimize for a naval aircraft. Grumman produced a very fine aircraft, too late for the war. Having neglected Naval aircraft for the FAA England did not have the luxury of other than a "make do".
This is what happens when you put ground pounders in charge of anything to do with the sea. How could the the world's premier naval power have allowed that to happen??Having neglected Naval aircraft for the FAA England did not have the luxury of other than a "make do".
fliger747 said:
Having neglected Naval aircraft for the FAA England did not have the luxury of other than a "make do".
This is what happens when you put ground pounders in charge of anything to do with the sea. How could the the world's premier naval power have allowed that to happen??
Cheers,
Wes
This is what happens when you put ground pounders in charge of anything to do with the sea. How could the the world's premier naval power have allowed that to happen??
Cheers,
Wes
As in the USA, the advent of engines in the 2,000hp class solved many problems, However, it was much more difficult for the British aircraft industry to switch to new types in wartime, As a result, aircraft which should have entered service about 1941, like this Fairey Firefly 1, did not appear in numbers until the end of the war.
Aircraft of the Second World War
The Development of the Warplane 1939-45
I must admit that to my mind the Fulmar was a missed opportunity. As has been pointed out earlier in the thread the RN had operated single seat aircraft for many years without any problems.
Had the RN gone for a single seat fighter, with the same advantages as the Fulmar, range and ammunition being the primary advantages, then we would have had a very useful fighter/recce aircraft. She would have been lighter resulting in an increased acceleration, climb and agility. I'm not trying to pretend that she would have been the equal to a Zero but would have filled the gaps more effectively.
My view is that the Admiralty got it right. The Fulmar, an all weather fighter, later the Firefly. The Sea Hurricane, an interim, reasonably fast day fighter, adapted from a standard production aircraft by the addition of what are a number of simple field mods. .
The Fulmar was an all weather fighter (?) in that it could find the carrier to land back aboard in crappier weather than the same year single seaters. Not sure the system did a whole lot of good at night. It also did nothing for finding the enemy aircraft, that was left to the good old eyeball, MK I.
Once again, refer to post 162 in this thread. Downright criminal in my book.At the end the RAF (which controlled FAA procurement and training until the eve of the war), made sure the FAA went to war undermanned and poorly equipped.
HEAR, HEAR! Making America "GRATE" again!? This is the second Pachydermous POTUS this century we've had to apologize to the world for! Nuff said.Australia would have been far better served to go tell the US president and all his rudeness to stick it, and his JSF where the sun doesn't shine and bought aircraft like the the new SU57. We would have saved ourselves a wad full of cash, had our aircraft at a fraction of the cost, and not have to deal with an "ally" of dubious reliability.
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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?)
2. The Wichita B-29 program had more engineers working at that one, single plant than England had engineers working in the entire industry. (Who was going to redesign the Sea Hurricane? Everything was going to new aircraft designs or engineering the assembly sequences for the new plants)
3. 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. all conspired to leave the RN bereft of any truly competitive and state of the art aircraft literally until the introduction of the Hawker Sea Fury. Consider the 82% increase in HP over the life of the Barracuda airframe compared to only a 38% increase in empty weight, All of that HP resulted in only a 14% increase in useful load.
(The Barracuda also was competing for better engines, all of which went to higher priority programs. - Good examples in the US would include cancellation of the Boeing PBB-1 and the Beech XA-38 Grizzly to ensure availability of the R3350 for those B-29's being built in Wichita.)
The exigencies of war combined with a lack of engines and manpower conspired with insipid customer design requirements consigned this aircraft to mediocrity.
(Again back to the rearmament and shadow factories, where were the engineering and assembly resources for the Sea Hurricane in 1938?) The fact the RN got the mileage out it that they did is a real tribute to the men that flew, maintained and supported it.
In fact, I will go further and say that in my opinion the Barracuda, Sea Fury, possibly the Wyvern and the Blackburn Buccaneer were the only effective aircraft developed by the Royal Navy after 1935. The RN can't even take credit for the Harrier as that was originally operated by the RAF.
End review
Boulton Paul, for example, since in any alternative FAA the Roc does not get built; BP was producing the Roc historically.
What would be so earth-shaking with redesigning the Hurricane into Sea Hurricane? Was it a harder thing to do than installing the turret into Skua to make the Roc?
Hawker can do it, BP can do it, Blackburn can, too. Gloster does not make the two fighter prototypes from ground up, so they can do it too (belonging to the same concern as Hawker did, and were producing Hurricanes historically). Vickers: no fooling around with 1-engine fighters = spare designer's resource.
Useful load for carrier-based A/C is very much a factor of wing lift capacity, allowed airframe weight-lifting capacity, and the funky requirement that A/C must actually take off from a carrier with a meaningful fuel & armament. One will not see the Barracuda taking off with 2-3 torpedoes from a carrier even if we somehow graft the Centaurus on the nose, a whole new A/C is needed.
Royal Navy didn't do development of aircraft, I'm not sure where from you get that. Sea Fury was developed by Hawker, for example. Too bad you don't consider the Swordfish, Sea Hornet and Seafire to be effective aircraft.
Boulton Paul, for example, since in any alternative FAA the Roc does not get built; BP was producing the Roc historically.
What would be so earth-shaking with redesigning the Hurricane into Sea Hurricane? Was it a harder thing to do than installing the turret into Skua to make the Roc?
Hawker can do it, BP can do it, Blackburn can, too. Gloster does not make the two fighter prototypes from ground up, so they can do it too (belonging to the same concern as Hawker did, and were producing Hurricanes historically). Vickers: no fooling around with 1-engine fighters = spare designer's resource.
If it was a high enough priority in 1938-1940 it would have been done. The fact of the matter is there was no excess engineering capability available in the UK and a more specialized "Sea Hurricane" was simply not a high enough priority with the deficit of engineers and factory space. There were simply more programs than resources. The Blackburn Botha and Warwick were simply higher priority in a resource constrained environment.
Useful load for carrier-based A/C is very much a factor of wing lift capacity, allowed airframe weight-lifting capacity, and the funky requirement that A/C must actually take off from a carrier with a meaningful fuel & armament. One will not see the Barracuda taking off with 2-3 torpedoes from a carrier even if we somehow graft the Centaurus on the nose, a whole new A/C is needed.
Again, there was a shortage of engine production so even to re-engine an airplane meant it was competing for resources, priorities, and allocations. If you can only produce X number of engines, and you have requirements for XX number of engines. The Barracuda lost that race, was there enough excess Merlin production at the time to engine the "Sea Hurricane" and still fulfill higher priority allocations?
Royal Navy didn't do development of aircraft, I'm not sure where from you get that. Sea Fury was developed by Hawker, for example. Too bad you don't consider the Swordfish, Sea Hornet and Seafire to be effective aircraft.
The problem with that last post is that it overlooks some very important home truths. The RN didn't need the aircraft types being designed and produced in the US until the carrier famine was overcome. the next problem is that most US types could not be operated from RN carriers for most of the war. Until the problems of the deck park had been solved (circa 1944) the numbers of Hellcats, Corsairs and the like were strictly limited. Even then, the abilities of US types to operate in the rough weather conditions and at night, which was a necessity in RN doctrine, proved very limited.
moreovewr, at the time the RN needed high performance aircraft.....1939-1940, the US aircraft industry was backward and did not offer any real solution to the problems confronting the RN at that time. The F4F was not ready, neither was the SBD. Aircraft like the Cleveland could not be operated from the small British Carriers
By 1943, things were turning around, but as the recent experiences with aircraft like the F-35, the apparent invincibility of the US aerospace industry is transient and unreliable. On the basis of the logic you are suggesting, countries like Australia would have been far better served to go tell the US president and all his rudeness to stick it, and his JSF where the sun doesn't shine and bought aircraft like the the new SU57. We would have saved ourselves a wad full of cash, had our aircraft at a fraction of the cost, and not have to deal with an "ally" of dubious reliability