Dogfighter?

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Disclaimer.
High speed maneuverability will normally defeat low speed maneuverability. But if your heart is set on a WWII era stall fighter I recommend these aircraft.

USA. P-36.
Japan. IJA Ki-43. IJN A6M was good too.
VVS. I-16.
RAF. Gloster Gladiator.
Italy. ?? I think they produced some good bi-planes during the late 1930s.
Germany. No WWII era stall fighters. The jumped straight to the Me-109 which was designed to Boom Zoom.
 
Ki43 would be my example, apart from dogfighting in swirling combats it wasn't really suited to anything else!
I would say it would be regarded as an "air superiority" fighter, rather than an interceptor?
 
Low wing loading made the P-36 an excellent stall fighter. Roll rate and climb were good too. I suspect a P-36 flown by a skilled pilot could hold its own vs the Ki-43 and A6M. As icing on the cake the P-36 was dirt cheap. One of the few fighter aircraft that compares well to the Me-109 in production cost.
 
Why would a P-36 be dirt cheap?

the ONLY differences between a P-36 and an early P-40 is the engine and the landing gear doors. 10th production P-36 was re-engined to make the XP-40.

Without going into actual contract details some quoted costs are very far from the real cost of some airplanes.
 
I would think the radial of the P-36 was far less expensive than the liquid cooled Allison. Just a guess.
 
davebender said:
Disclaimer.
..........
Italy. ?? I think they produced some good bi-planes during the late 1930s.
..........
Click to expand...

From "They gave me a Seafire" Cap. 7 – Cmdr R. "Mike" Crosley, pag. 42

"There were still two Gladiators at Yeovilton. There was also a captured Italian CR 42. Wiggy and our CO, Rodney Carver, had a doghfight over the airfield and the CR won. That was rather glossed over later, and no one would admit it; but it was true."
 
MikeGazdik said:
I would think the radial of the P-36 was far less expensive than the liquid cooled Allison. Just a guess.
Click to expand...

Without prices for both from the same year and for a similar quantity of engines ( a contract for 100 engines would give a cheaper per engine price than a single engine purchase) and spares, if any spelled out, comparing prices gets tricky. The P-36 used a 14 cylinder radial, some export Hawks used the same engine and some used the 9 cylinder Cyclone. The radials used cylinder heads with the fins machined into them and used cylinders of steel with the cooling fins also machined into them. I don't know about the P&W engine but the Cyclone used 16 hold down bolts for each cylinder. Cost of bolts is a problem but the accurate machining and threading of all those holes is.
Airplane engines were not cheap and while P&W and Wright were competing against each other in trying to provide engines of similar power to weight ratios and cost and Allison may not have been ( not in the commercial market, although perhaps hopes initial planning stages?) the benefit to cost ratio would have had to been considered at some point.

And changing engines doesn't change a plane from being expensive to dirt cheap. While the engine is the single most expensive item in the airplane even a P-36/P-40 air frame can cost several times the price of the engine and that is without the instruments, radios and armament. Changing from say a $12,000 dollar engine to a $9,000 dollar engine doesn't rally change the price of a $50,000 fighter that much.
 
Has anybody priced compared radial and inline v engines to see which is more expensive.

I can see many more labor hours spend to make all the parts a radial needs, much more complicated intake, and exhaust manifolds, machining, or very fragiile molds for the fins. All the separate assemblies would take much more labor to bolt together.

I not so sure a radial would be cheaper.
 

How about the Brewster F2A-1 or its probably slightly lighter, land-based export version B-239? Being, by design, a carrier aircraft, I'd expect low speed flight/stall characteristic to be pretty good. I believe these parameter values are based on weight, power and wing area values that are pretty close to correct but noticed some variability among sources. Looks like the Buff comes in pretty close to the p-36... Haven't looked at the same values for the I-16. Might that not be a contender along with the Fiat Cr-42

Brewster F2A-1:
Power loading: 5.65 lbs/hp
Wing loading: 25.7 lbs/sq. ft.

Gloster Gladiator:
Power loading: 5.86 lbs/hp
Wing loading: 16.8 lbs/sq. ft.

Curtiss P-36A:
Power loading: 5.38 lbs/hp
Wing loading: ~25.0 lbs/sq. ft.
 
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CORSNING said:
I can't remember where I read it anymore, but I remember reading that the Northrop P-66 was even more maneuverable than the P-36.
Click to expand...

From Joe Baugher's web site;
" The pilots of the 14th Pursuit Group actually liked their P-66s, and they described the P-66 as being a very good aerobatic aircraft. Test pilot Gil Clark thought that it was the best aircraft he had ever flown, being much better than the Curtiss P-36. However, the cockpit layout was rather poor, and the aircraft was not sufficiently robust for a fighter. In addition the P-66 had an disconcerting tendency to ground-loop, some 15 examples being lost to this sort of accident."

Please note that 14th was not issued the P-66s until after Pearl Harbor and had been formed with P-40s and P-43s. Some 40-60 ? were issued and by Feb some were in route to China.

A plane may be easy to fly or perform aerobatics in but not actually exceed another planes ability to maneuver. Well coordinated controls or ease of controls can make an aircraft easy to maneuver without actually affecting turn radius or peak rolling speeds. Maybe is was better in maneuver than the P-36 but lets be careful of reading too much into statements that might actually not be saying that.
 
That's probably a misprint. There's about 2150 lbs between it's empty weight and max takeoff weight. 290 gals would weigh about 1740, leaving only 410 left for oil, ammo and what you gotta include, the pilot.
 
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