Excluding Spitfires and Hurricanes, best fighter for Malaya 1940-41?

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I agree on radials. I still think the Hawk75/P36 is hard to beat. Use P&W 1830 2 speed. It's tougher than a water cooled engine, fewer parts, no radiator to puncture, easier to keep running. 2 speed engine in a Hawk75/P36 should be about as fast as a Hurricane. Buffalo had overheating problems it's whole career in warm climates. A bunch of P43 Lancers with armor and actual fuel tanks (instead of the leaking wet wing) would be nice for boom and zoom of bombers while avoiding Ki43's which they were considerably faster than.
 
Schweik said:
Anyway to get back to the OP as it relates to the F2A, I'd repeat Fiskens words, as he was probably the most qualified proponent of the aircraft:

"the Buffalo was not a suitable aircraft to fight the Japanese with"
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Hi,

If I am recalling correctly the same was said about the Wildcat by some USMC pilots after the Battle of Midway.

Regards

Pat
 
Both true comments - though the big problem for a Buffalo against German fighters would be speed I think.

The USMC pilots in early 1942 weren't quite as well trained as the Navy pilots who had also incorporated sophisticated methods like the Thach Weave to get the most out of the Wildcat. USMC pilots didn't do that well (initially) with SBD bombers either compared to the Navy. But I think they were right about their assessment - the Wildcat was barely adequate to face the Ki-43 or the Zero, which meant that with a few adjustments and proper tactics, it could be used against it roughly at parity. I don't think you cold say F4F ever had an edge over the A6M necessarily, but it was good enough. Maybe the best fighter for early 1942. One advantage the F4F had over a P-40 for example was better altitude performance. Plus the radial engine is arguably better in that kind of environment. Early P-40s were good so long as the fight was within their altitude envelope. They struggled when they had to fight at 25,000 ft which they sometimes did.

My theory is that if a F4F was 80% as good as a Zero in a fight, the F2A was maybe more like 60 or 70%. I can't prove that though. One possible significant difference between F2A and F4F is that the Wildcat had a bigger wing and I believe, better wing-loading than a Buffalo. That helped. Fisken said that Buffalos turned poorly, though he may just have meant that they turned poorly compared to Ki-27s and Ki-43 (which almost every military aircraft did). Anyone know what the turning circle was? It may have also made a difference fighting at higher altitude too.


The strange and persistent thing about the F2A which speaks in it's favor is how well the Finns did with it and continued to do for quite a while, long after they were facing only obsolete Soviet types flown by poorly trained pilots. To me that suggests it really had potential under the right circumstances. We do have reason to believe the Finns were unusually good pilots, and we know their tactics were good, they invented the finger four after all. But maybe there is some other factor, similar to the explanation as to why the Soviets did so well with the P-39. My guess is climate. Planes fly differently in cold vs. hot weather, and high vs. low humidity. Engines function differently too.
 
tomo pauk said:
In 1941? Source?



Hurricanes in 1941 were outfitted with protection both for pilot and fuel. let's install full protection on the Buffalo and see how it badly performs, as it historically did in the US service.
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Pre-war requirement for a fighter for colonial service was to use air cooled engine. Several prototypes were built but none went into service. We used the Mohawk and Buffalo instead. The intention was to build the Mohawk in India, but only 4 were eventually built.
 

I can see good reasons for that, but just because there was a requirement historically doesn't mean it was correct.
 
Radial engine has the added benefit of less vulnerability to a 'magic bullet'. The P-40 kind of got away with it because most of the plumbing was in the nose which was a little harder to hit.
 
Gentlemen,

The Dutch had 20 Hawk-75A-7s that they flew in defense of Singapore (minimal operations) and the Dutch East Indies. In my opinion, they did not fare any better against the Japanese than the Buffalo did.

The aircraft, which were Cyclone powered, entered service with the Dutch in October of 1940. By the time the war started, 5 Hawks had been written off due to training accidents, 12 Hawks were operational, with 1 more in reserve and 2 under repair. On December 8th, the Dutch placed 2/3 of their bombers and 1/4th of their fighters under RAF control. The first offensive mission was Dec 21, 1941, when 4 Hawks were dispatched to bomb a rail line in southern Thailand. The results were: one Hawk reached the target, bombed and missed, one bombed a secondary target, but was shot down (aircraft destroyed, pilot injured} by "friendly fire"., and the other two collided due to thick clouds with both pilots killed. The next 3 weeks saw the Hawks used for convoy protection. It was during this time, that the Hawks started to demonstrate the same problems with the Cyclone engines that Hawk A-4 had.
During January, 1942, the Japanese send bombers with escorts to attack Palembang on two occasions. Ten Hawks along with other fighters intercepted on each occasion. It appears while there were claims for damaged Japanese aircraft, there were no claims for destroyed. During these raids, a Hawk was written off due to engine problems. Also, during this time, at least 3 Hawks were fitted with armored windscreens. The Japanese attacked Java in early February, with 2 waves of Betty bombers (64 total) escorted by ZerosI64 total). Despite a 20 minute warning, 8 Hawks did not get airborne until after the first wave bombed. The results of the action were, 1 hawk shot down, pilot killed, 2 returned to base with engine problems, both later destroyed on the ground by strafing, 2 Hawks caught the first wave of bombers and damaged 5 of them, and the other 3 were vectored to attack the 2nd wave of bombers. Of the 3 that attacked the 2nd wave. all 3 were shot down, with 1 pilot killed and 1 wounded. For the raid, the Dutch and Americans claimed 8 Japanese aircraft destroyed, although the Japanese records indicate that 22 bombers and fighters did not return to base. The Dutch lost 6 of 8 Hawk 75A-7's and 10 of 13 CW-21's. Also 3 US P-40E's were also shot down. By the middle of March, the Hawk-75's were out of service.

Data from Curtiss Hawk 75 by Gerry Beauchamp and Jean Cuny, pages 208-213.

Given the conditions of the airfields, the supply situation, and environmental conditions, that any plane would fare better than the Buffalo, neither a P-36 nor a P-40.

Just my 2 cents worth.

Eagledad
 
It is an intriguing thought, an F2a with 300 more horsepower as someone said upthread. Given it seems to have had favorable handling characteristics and was easy to land if the extra power gets us up to say 350 mph and a decent rate of climb it starts sounding alot like an early F6F.
Might have actually been a winner save for a bit more power.
 

Very interesting and good points. Probably regardless of the type, a few more needed to be there and about 3-6 months earlier to give them any kind of chance.
 

Yeah but I two problems - where do you get that engine at the time (I don't know what would be available, R-2600? Seems like that would be too heavy), and wouldn't you have stability problems with the short / fat fuselage with the extra torque?
 
The American F2A-3 had an extra 100hp for take-off and more importantly had 1000hp at 14,000ft in high gear compared to the R-1820G105 engine (used in some of the export Buffs)
800hp at 17,100ft.
Since the F2A-3 seems to have been rated at less than stellar altitude performance (but combat engagements rare) the idea of an extra 200-300hp turning it into a Zero killer may be a false hope.
I would also note that the later Cyclone engines (the 1350-1425hp ones) gained a lot of power at sea level by using higher boost and higher RPM, however at altitude even the higher ROM did not change things a lot, like going from 900hp/2300rpm max continuous at 15,000ft to 975hp/2500rpm at 14,700ft max continuous. Apparently Wright didn't change the supercharger much when they changed most everything else.
 
Hi,
I think that you make a very good point. Any potential improvement in any one area will likely come at a cost in other areas.
Pat
 
Shortround6 said:
The only way you are getting 300 more HP into a Buffalo in late 1941/ early 1942 is by sticking an R-2600 in it, SInce the R-2600 is about 600lbs heavier and needs a bigger/heavier propeller this pretty much means you need a new airplane.
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Would the re-design really be that extensive? ( I'm asking honestly, it's not a rhetorical question).
A couple thoughts that makes me think it might not be that impractical. They we're able to throw, I think 200 hp, aditional on the F4F/Fm2, a very similar design it would seem aerodynamicaly without extensive modification.
Also, some designs had hp just about double durring the course of the war without extensive re-design to body or wing. Now admittedly the F2a is no bf109 or spitfire aerodynamicaly but we're only talking about a 30% increase in hp, not 100%.
I realize the definition of what is or what is not an extensive re-design may be at issue here.
 
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If the CAC Boomerang was to be ready for Malaya in early 1941, what engine does it have? And when must the prototype be ready? Both it and the Wirraray would have contributed nicely.

 
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