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Dav, Where I am trying to get to on the F8F and F4U discussion is that I have data from the 1944 fighter conference and the F8F was not mentioned at all. I don't believe that F8F ever saw combat in WW2 whereas the F4U4 saw extensive combat the last three or four months of the war. My guess is that the F4U in the Dinah instance was a F4U1D which with WEP had substantially better performance than the earlier F4U1. Thanks for your comments on the recollections between Bill and myself. Actually, my comments were not about my father as Bill's were,but about myself. My father was of an earlier generation than Bill's father and he never went past the eighth grade as he had to quit school in 1916 or 17 to help his family. He never had the opportunity to play high school and college sports in the !950s, as I did. Every day I am thankful that I had that opportunity in that time frame, perhaps largely because of the efforts of Bill's father and many others like him. Bill McClanahan was a sportswriter and very talented cartoonist for the Dallas Morning News. He used to do cartoons showing the mascots of the various schools and his picks for that weekend's SWC games. Very special.
Dav, Where I am trying to get to on the F8F and F4U discussion is that I have data from the 1944 fighter conference and the F8F was not mentioned at all. I don't believe that F8F ever saw combat in WW2 whereas the F4U4 saw extensive combat the last three or four months of the war.
A high altitude supercharger was developed, but was not available until mid '44, and was installed in the dash 4. As for a turbo supercharger, the tight cowl and slender fuselage would make an installation dicey (compare with the large fuselage of the P-47).
The seat adjustment control in the F4U saved my Grandfathers life....
Marshall, the USN stated that the Mustang had low speed control problems which made it not as suitable for carrier ops as purpose built AC. If you look at takeoff distances the Mustang took longer to get off than either Hellcat or Corsair. More importantly, the USN did not like liquid cooled engines because of reliability problems, having Merlin engines on board would complicate spare parts supplies, structural strength would need to be beefed up for continual carrier landings which adds weight and the airplane would need to be marinised which has to do with corrosion control. I don't know how much weight that would add or if performance would be degraded.
What I have is from the minutes of fighter conference, Pautuxent River, Md., October, 1944. It is located in Dean's "America's 100 thousand," There are some strange goings ons in the report as the F4U4 is rated in a couple of categorys behind the F4U1 D. I know the performance of the F4U4 was substantially better than the 1D and the 4 was reportedly the best handling Corsair of all.
Dav, I think that is a reasonable conclusion. The F4U4 in operational use had outstanding performance, much better than the F4U1D so the results that showed up in the 1944 conference that I have don't make sense.
Marshall with respect that is a fluff piece. He should aslo compare against the P-51B-15 or P-51H if he wants to make a convincing case
Corsair gets my vote