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Longer landing gear. Not very practical to add on the F4F. The bent wing on the F4U allowed shorter landing gear that could double as dive breaks. I think the P-47 may have had less prop clearance than either the F4U or F6F.How did the F6F deal with this issue?
Longer landing gear. Not very practical to add on the F4F. The bent wing on the F4U allowed shorter landing gear that could double as dive breaks. I think the P-47 may have had less prop clearance than either the F4U or F6F.
Wikipedia throws out a 6 inch clearance figure for the P-47 for what that's worth. (at a guess the 6 vs 4 inches could be differences between the toothpick and paddle props)Correct, From what I could find in AHT the P-47 had a fraction over 4in, The F6F had a bit over 7 in and the F4U had 9in.
The same was true for part of the reasoning for adding the broader chord props to the P-38K (better thrust at high altitude, though I suspect better low speed thrust/climb performance at all altitudes would also be relevant).Due to the engine or perhaps the props had something to do with it? A 12ft prop has around 43% more 'area' than a 10 ft prop. What works well at sea level doesn't work so well as the air thins out.
Here's one that got an engine MUCH larger than designed for. I don't have the test flight results, but it looks good on paper ... sort of ...
View attachment 296724
Looks like it got a very expensive polish job, too! I bet THAT took awhile ... of course, now you can see it from 100 miles away in the sun! The engine-out performance suffered, though.
I wonder which way that center wheel retracts.