Capt. Eric Brown: Flight Test God or Biased Meathead

drgondog said:

I agree everything you say.

I would add that my father would never have positioned himself as a 109 or Fw 190D 'expert' on the basis of the hours he flew in them at Gablingen after the war. He did have the ability to fly them against the late model 51D flown by very skilled pilots (Elder and Hovde) but who knows what actual condition both ships were in relative to overhauls and specs?

I wonder if he would even consider himself an 'expert' in Mustangs with over 600 hours in them including post war and Korea? He would have considered Bob Hoover as the 'measuring stick' for that standard.

Expert could be in the eye of the beholder..

Click to expand...

IIRC your father said that the Fw-190 was slightly better in the horizontal than the P-51 ? If so it agrees completely with other aces have said and all the sensible stuff I've read on the subject. But seeing that you'd have to be accustomed to an a/c before you can get the max out of it your father must have been quite familiar with the Fw-190 ? How many hours did he fly it ?

Anyhow may he rest in peace with all the other aces out there

Hey Graeme,

Could you send me scans of these articles by email? I expect they are to large to be posted here.

Krabat

Soren said:

IIRC your father said that the Fw-190 was slightly better in the horizontal than the P-51 ? If so it agrees completely with other aces have said and all the sensible stuff I've read on the subject. But seeing that you'd have to be accustomed to an a/c before you can get the max out of it your father must have been quite familiar with the Fw-190 ? How many hours did he fly it ?

Anyhow may he rest in peace with all the other aces out there

Click to expand...

Soren - he had ~ 25 hours in it, liked the airplane and said he could easily take it into combat. Interestingly enough he had just a little more than 50hrs in the Mustang by the time he had 3 air scores - two over 109s plus a probable and one Ju 87.

He was regarded by the ones that flew with him as one of the best pilots they flew with...

I would have to believe someone like Willi R. would be able to extract more from the 190D, but reminded that dad also defeated the 190D flown by the other senior pilots in his 51D when they swapped out.

Soren - the problem is that the experiences weren't under serious test and flight test profiles so the judgements are subjective and falls largely back to pilot versus pilot skill.

All I know is that he had enormous respect for the pilots and a/c he flew with and against. He may have been cocky, but it would only be discernable in rare circumstances. He was a very modest man.

There are several good observations by Bud Fortier on my father in his (Fortier's) book "An Ace of the Eighth"...

Thanks for the sentiments. I miss him.

Matt308 said:

Okay all you turds that destroy beloved airplane threads with your unending banter about the illustrious Mr. Brown... here is your chance to piss and moan in relative comfort about whether Eric is a biased buffoon whose only support can be airplanes British or if Eric was so bloody brilliant in his analyses that his conclusions are irrefutable.

May you argue until your bladders burst. Just stay outta my threads.

Click to expand...

ok then

I would have to believe someone like Willi R. would be able to extract more from the 190D, but reminded that dad also defeated the 190D flown by the other senior pilots in his 51D when they swapped out.

Click to expand...

Did your father fly against senior German pilots post war ? Or did you mean senior -51 pilots who took the 190 out for a spin ?

Soren said:

Did your father fly against senior German pilots post war ? Or did you mean senior -51 pilots who took the 190 out for a spin ?

Click to expand...

Senior USAAF pilots. The senior LW pilotes were still in the 'debriefing stage' in July - Sep 1945 timeframe. My father also taught the same guys how to fly the B-26 and A-20 - at least well enough to keep them alive on whiskey runs to Paris.

drgondog said:

My father also taught the same guys how to fly the B-26 and A-20 - at least well enough to keep them alive on whiskey runs to Paris.

Click to expand...

I don't think they would understand or approve today and there aren't enough airplanes to bend

pbfoot said:

I don't think they would understand or approve today and there aren't enough airplanes to bend

Click to expand...

You are 100% correct - and actually I would say that zero tolerance for peacetime mistakes started in 1947-1949.

drgondog said:

You are 100% correct - and actually I would say that zero tolerance for peacetime mistakes started in 1947-1949.

Click to expand...

When i listen to the guys from that era talk , a check out involved a 10-15 minute talk on the aircraft with a few minutes in the cockpit and away you go. met a gent named Kelly Walker he said his check out in the 262 was all of 15 minutes on the ground.

I agree with both Kurfurst, Bill and Erich here, but I can understand where Sys is coming from as well.

You can not go up and fly a plane for an hour and put an accurate ranking on it. Now having said that I do respect his knowledge and that he has way more flight experience than I have (Hell I have no WW2 aircraft flight experience ), but I do not agree with everything Eric Brown says. I just dont think that the few hours in each aircraft can give you an accurate assessment of the aircraft.

I still would give anything to fly atleast 1 or 2 of the aircraft he has flown though...

Bingo Chris. You have to respect the fact that he flew the aircraft in question. At the end of the day his opinions have to be taken with a pinch of salt and alongside all the other data that is out there and available on the web and in books. In my opinion his is neither a Flight Test God or a Biased Meathead but is somewhere in between. Whilst he certainly will be a little bit biased his opinions have to still be valued because unlike almost everybody here he flew the aircraft and not just looked at statistics (not that there isn't anything wrong with doing it - it just doesn't give the full picture).

I read Capt. Brown's book, Wings of the Navy, which as the name would reflect, covered (Allied) naval aircraft, everything from the Swordfish to the F4U. It was an enjoyable read and whatever else you can say about Capt. Brown, he is a good writer and has flown in an incredible amount of planes. Having said that, and not being a pilot myself, I'm not sure what to make of some of his assessments of the planes he flew as they seem to go against consensus (not that that makes him wrong). One striking example for me was the difference in his opinions of the Wildcat and the Corsair. He writes glowingly of the Wildcat, which he clearly adored, and with considerable disdain for the Corsair, which he clearly disliked. As has been written on this thread, as a naval aviator, he may have based too much of his opinion on the takeoff and landing characteristics of the respective aircraft. Certainly the Corsair was not the easiest plane to fly off a carrier (or land), long nose, vicious torque roll upon stalling, etc., but I still think if you asked a 100 pilots which they'd rather take into a dogfight, all 100 would say the Corsair. It doesn't matter how well the plane takes off or lands if you never live to land it. Still and all, I'd love to have a chat with him (if he's still around) and talk about planes.

Actually, except for the early "birdcage" canopy F4U-1's, view for take-off in the Corsair was very good.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G69yNblVO2k

The better view isn't surprising, given the blown hood and raised pilot's seat of later Corsairs. I believe that Capt. Brown flew at least one of the later versions, an AU-1 (F4U-6) if I remember correctly, and he seemed to dislike that even more than the earlier versions. I guess he just didn't like the Corsair.

Venganza

Venganza said:

I believe that Capt. Brown flew at least one of the later versions, an AU-1 (F4U-6) if I remember correctly, and he seemed to dislike that even more than the earlier versions. I guess he just didn't like the Corsair.

Click to expand...

You remember correctly!...

It is clear that Brown was heavily biased against the Corsair but he displayed the same bias against other AC also. For instance he rates the JU87 above the SBD which he says is tied with the Val. Given the supposed good survivability of the SBD and it's combat record, that seems implausible. His rating of the greatest WW2 carrier fighters is (1) Hellcat, (2) Zeke, (3) Wildcat, (4) Corsair, (5) Sea Hurricane, (6) Seafire. I am glad the US Navy saw things differently. I believe that Brown, like a few members of this forum, was decidedly prejudiced toward one country's designs and one theatre of war.

Re: carrier fighter ratings, it really does matter a lot how easy the plane is to land on the carrer (mainly, relatively few planes had serious problems taking off from carriers). Even in wartime carrier fighters tended to engage in intense air combat a fairly small % of the time. Lots of operational losses when not in contact with the enemy, or in prolonged ground strikes with little air opposition, could really wear down a force.

And remember the USN's preference for F4U depended somewhat on version. When F4U's started operating regularly from carriers in Jan 1945, that was F4U-1D v F6F-5 which may not have been such a big performance difference in practice (eg. when the two examples tested v a captured A6M5 had best speeds of 413mph for the Corsari, 409 for the Hellcat, closer than the official stats). And the F6F was easier to operate, also better for deflection shooting for one of the same reasons, lower nose profile. However F4U-4 had a clearer advantage over F6F-5 in basic performance, for the postwar decision to make it the main piston fighter. It was good enough in carrier characteristics and significantly better in other areas, at least was though to be.

I'm not sure that reasoning held up so well in the real piston fighter combat mission in Korea though. In 1945 carrier ops 41% of F4U's hit by AA were lost compared to 26% of F6F's; the operational loss rates were ~.75% and .5% per sortie respectively. In Korea those were the two basic sources of loss, and carrier operating conditions were typically more difficult, especially in winter. Those statistical differences if they held up represent a lot of planes and pilots which would not have been lost in Korea if using the F6F (considering 530 F4U's lost in Korea to all causes, none to piston fighters, against which the F4U-4/5's real advantage would lie).

As for AU-1 it as never a carrier plane for the US. Some Marine sdns in Korea deployed to CVE's and CVL's as one sdn air groups in the Yellow Sea with their F4U-4's, but never took AU-1's. The AU-1 was popular though for the landbased USMC mission in Korea: better power at low altitude, more payload, less vulnerability to ground fire, and just a new airplane in 1952, not a banged up F4U-4 delivered late in WWII or just after and already run hard in Korean combat conditions for 2 years.

The AU-1's which survived Korea were mostly transferred to the French, operating mainly from shore bases also. But the F4U-7, purpose built for France, was basically the AU-1 with the F4U-4's engine, and was apparently a satisfactory carrier plane.

Joe

On May 16, 1944, after a series of comparative tests, a Navy Evaluation Board concluded that the F4U1D was the best all around Navy fighter available and a suitable carrier AC. It was recommended that all carrier fighter and fighter bomber units be supplied with that type ASAP. For a post war comparison of the two types by someone who flew both operationally, read Linnekin, "80 Knots to Mach Two." It is clear that the Corsair was superior in most respects. In tests held by the Navy against the FW190 with the F6F3 and F4U1, the Corsair appeared to hold all the advantages over the Hellcat. I have seen the tests of the Hellcat and Corsair versus the Zeke also and the performance numbers for the US AC appear to be in error.

In WW2, in the Pacific, the Hellcat and Corsair flew almost the same number of combat sorties. The Corsair dropped more than twice the tonnage of bombs yet had only 349 losses from triple A to 553 for the Hellcat. It has been stated on this forum that the Corsair dropped lots of bombs on unoccupied or lightly defended islands. Only goes to show that statistics can be misleading. The ratio of fighter kills versus bomber kills is tilted in favor of the Corsair also and since the Corsair was operational earlier than the Hellcat and was contending with veteran IJN pilots in the Solomons, that would seem to be a factor also. I put a lot of faith in pireps such as Linnekin who flew both operationally, although not in combat. His favorite piston fighter(which he also flew operationally) was the Bearcat but he stated that the Corsair compared favorably to the F8F in some ways. His evaluation of the Hellcat was that it was a bit of a slug.

I don't like to compare anything only by statistics but what about the kill/loss ratio for Corsair and Hellcat? F4U 11:1 (2140 destroyed to 189 lost aircrafts) and F6F 19:1 (5163 to 270), why Hellcat was so successful?