davebender
1st Lieutenant
Turning the Jug into a dive bomber would have required dive brakes the size of a garage door. 
F6F Hellcat vs. P-47 Thunderbolt
- Thread starter Clay_Allison
- Start date
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1. To clarify, that quote refers to landbased USMC units, not USN carrier units. On carriers, dive/scout bomber outfit eventually shrank from 2 to a single squadron, to fit more fighters aboard (either F4U's or F6F's or both) to defend against kamikazes, but neither fighter type literally replaced the SB2C, which replaced the SBD. The AD mainly replaced the SB2C, after the war.
2. No that's not true. Few SBD claims against Japanese fighters check out in Japanese accounts: Zeroes surely had a plus outcome v SBD's in reality. But this gets back to what facts people have. The USN believed during WWII what Tillman said, and that series of books (Dauntless, Hellcat, Corsair, etc) while highly valuable, tells things pretty exclusively from the US side. It doesn't IMO call into question statements he makes about facts the USN or USMC had, like how effective F4U's and SBD's were in ground attack. But again, those statements are about the USMC ground attack missions ca. 1944, mainly against bypassed Japanese garrisons. The USN did not conclude during WWII that fighters bombers could entirely replace divebombers aboard carriers, and the postwar attack plane concept as in AD still had big dive brakes.
3. In part this is a matter of semantics. What fighter units would call 'dive bombing', real divebomber units might call 'glide bombing'. Really steep divebombing by fighters was not unheard of, but required a much higher pull out altitude than a real divebomber, and hence inevitably lower accuracy, though maybe not vastly less. Likewise the more common glide boming at lower angles wasn't as accurate either. But OTOH the fighter bomber was less vulnerable and more flexible, particularly in being able to help defend the carrier.
F6F's acted as fighter bombers as often as F4U's in side by side carrier ops, and same source NACS, shows that typical loads delivered per sortie for the two were similar, only slightly in the F4U's favor. For many ground targets in 1945, a carrier fighter bomber was suitable enough, but a divebomber was still considered desirable for some target types, and so retained (on CV's; CVL's and CVE's for most of the war only carried carried TBF/M's and fighters).
Joe
renrich
Chief Master Sergeant
My typing skills, as well as computer skills are poor so I am not going to copy the text from Tillman's books. JB covered the salient points well. Although I have Tillman's book on the Corsair the actual text covering the dive bombing comparison with SBD's is online. I googled Corsairs dive bombing. The ability of the Corsair to become a fighter after the bombs were dropped no doubt was a big factor. The facts are that the Corsair was used as a high angle divebomber and was effective in WW2 and the Corsair was judged as a better carrier fighter and fighter bomber on May 16, 1944 than the Hellcat by a USN evaluation board. Later it was decided that the number of fighters on board fleet carriers be increased to 73. No doubt part of the decision was because of the kamikaze threat and the other was that the Corsair and Hellcat were quite effective in dual roles. It is interesting to speculate that in 1942, at Coral Sea and Midway, the fleet carriers had only one squadron of VFs(18) and two squadrons of VBs and VSBs(36) plus the squadron of VTs(18) which left them terribly short of VFs for escort and CAP. Yet by 1944, it was found that the VFs in service then could be almost as effective as the VBs in that role and still be effective as fighters. I don't believe the Hellcat could dive bomb at steep angles because it had no dive brakes. However, it did deliver bombs at shallow diving angles. Whether that qualifies as divebombing may be a question of semantics. Interestingly the Corsair was more accurate at very high angle dive bombing than the SBD.
Magister
Airman 1st Class
Interestingly the Corsair was more accurate at very high angle dive bombing than the SBD.
Do you have a source for that claim? Please see my post above regarding the evaluation of such a claim.
The facts are that the Corsair was used as a high angle divebomber and was effective in WW2 and the Corsair was judged as a better carrier fighter and fighter bomber on May 16, 1944 than the Hellcat by a USN evaluation board.
And in May of 1946, two years later and with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight and mountains of actual data, the USN judged that that the Hellcat had a "considerable advantage over the F4U when flown under the same conditions" and was actually superior in combat. 26% of Hellcats that suffered combat damage were destroyed while 41% of Corsairs met that fate.
The F6F appears to have had considerable advantage over the F4U when flown under the same
conditions. Receiving about the same number of hits per sortie in comparable operations, the
F6F had a far lower rate of loss per plane hit.
Page 79, Note (e) to Table 29 of Naval Aviation Combat Statistics, WWII
Thus comparisons are valid between the carrier F6F and F4U totals because they generally operated from the same ships during the same periods.
...
Certain tentative conclusions may be reached from these two tables:
(a) The F6F was slightly superior to the F4U in combat, apparently chiefly because of its greater ability to survive damage.
Page 58 and Table 19:
I for one would have rather gone into combat with a Hellcat as its performance was still superior to its adversaries and it didn't have the glass jaw, Achilles heel or however you would like to characterize the Corsair's far greater vulnerability.
The Corsair koolaid is powerful stuff. I have no doubt that had the USN's studies established that the Hellcat was 57% more likely to be brought down than the Corsair after suffering battle damage "when flown under the same conditions," that your posts would be peppered with that fact in game, set, match, end of story fashion.
Do you have a source for that claim? Please see my post above regarding the evaluation of such a claim.
The facts are that the Corsair was used as a high angle divebomber and was effective in WW2 and the Corsair was judged as a better carrier fighter and fighter bomber on May 16, 1944 than the Hellcat by a USN evaluation board.
And in May of 1946, two years later and with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight and mountains of actual data, the USN judged that that the Hellcat had a "considerable advantage over the F4U when flown under the same conditions" and was actually superior in combat. 26% of Hellcats that suffered combat damage were destroyed while 41% of Corsairs met that fate.
The F6F appears to have had considerable advantage over the F4U when flown under the same
conditions. Receiving about the same number of hits per sortie in comparable operations, the
F6F had a far lower rate of loss per plane hit.
Page 79, Note (e) to Table 29 of Naval Aviation Combat Statistics, WWII
Thus comparisons are valid between the carrier F6F and F4U totals because they generally operated from the same ships during the same periods.
...
Certain tentative conclusions may be reached from these two tables:
(a) The F6F was slightly superior to the F4U in combat, apparently chiefly because of its greater ability to survive damage.
Page 58 and Table 19:
I for one would have rather gone into combat with a Hellcat as its performance was still superior to its adversaries and it didn't have the glass jaw, Achilles heel or however you would like to characterize the Corsair's far greater vulnerability.
The Corsair koolaid is powerful stuff. I have no doubt that had the USN's studies established that the Hellcat was 57% more likely to be brought down than the Corsair after suffering battle damage "when flown under the same conditions," that your posts would be peppered with that fact in game, set, match, end of story fashion.
renrich
Chief Master Sergeant
Same source as before. Tillman said the SBD was more accurate at 70 degrees whereas the Corsair was more accurate at 85 degrees. The Hellcat was still operational in 1946 and the Navy knew that with jets on the way the prop planes were going to be attack AC. Wonder why the Corsair? There were some Japanese AC at the end where the Corsair's edge in performance was a definite advantage. A good source is "80 knots to Mach 2" by Linnekin to see a comparison of the two's flying qualities. Another source is Williams with an official comparison of the F4U1 and F6F3 versus the FW190. I still wonder how the Corsair dropped almost 3 times the amount of bombs and had a lot fewer losses from ground fire. Oh well, "one can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink."
Magister
Airman 1st Class
I deleted my post. This is becoming a dead horse.
The Thunderbolt and the Hellcat are just about as equal as you can get for air to air combat. Of course the Jug rules as a fighter bomber and the Hellcat as a Navy fighter. Read an account from a P-47 pilot just today about the Navy and USAAF being cooperative stateside for mock fights when based near each other. The author stated that they were near equal.
renrich
Chief Master Sergeant
Agreed and he was beat up pretty bad.
Demetrious
Airman 1st Class
- 104
- Aug 22, 2007
Agreed, but what is this I hear about the P-47 being a "great climber?" One of my favorite anecdotes about the P-47 comes from Hub Zemeke, after he was congratulated on proving that the P-47 could outdive a 109. He said, "By god, it ought to dive- it certainly won't climb!" (I have seen this quote attributed to Donald J.M. Blakeslee as well.) In fact, the poor climb rate of the P-47 is the one thing I hear about the most, right behind it's incredible ruggedness. The data on wikipedia shows the F6F has a slight advantage in climb rate (3,500ft/s to 3,125), not a disadvantage.
Sadly, I almost never see roll rate data, anywhere, but the impressive roll rate of the P-47 is well known, so I'll assume it had the advantage there. The P-47 was faster and rolled better, the F6F rolled well (but not as good as the Jug) and turned rather better (wing loading of 37.7lbs/square foot to 58.3).
These ships seem very similar in performance. It would seem that it comes down to what you consider more important, turn rate or roll rate. I'd say roll rate, personally, but it's worth considering that the F6F was a good roller and had good turn; it's just that the P-47 was an exceptional roller.
I would love, with all my soul, to find data that gives the rate of roll in degrees/sec for these ships.
If you're willing to spend the time, try
National Archives of Australia
for any plane which was flown by the Royal Australian Air Force. There are a lot of digitised performance files already, and they'll do other ones for a fee. I've seen some roll-rate info in there.
National Archives of Australia
for any plane which was flown by the Royal Australian Air Force. There are a lot of digitised performance files already, and they'll do other ones for a fee. I've seen some roll-rate info in there.
I don't know how accurate this graph is but it's always some info.
http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/naca868-rollchart.jpg
Demetrious
Airman 1st Class
- 104
- Aug 22, 2007
You have filled me with glee, sir. I thank you.
mhuxt, I didn't know about this site before now... I think I'll go look up the Buffalo and see how it rolled.
EDIT: This graph is fascinating- it really shows how the Spitfire dominated low-speed fights, but lost roll performance rapidly as speed increased. The data for the P-40 and the P-51 are interesting too, since they rolled better then most, but only at the higher speeds. Maintaining those velocities would have been easy for the P-51, but not so much for the P-40... I wonder if WWII aircraft performance has a chart for sea level performance as well (though 10,000 feet really isn't that high.)
The roll performance of the clipped-wing Spitfire is slightly frightening, as well.
Magister
Airman 1st Class
I see this too.
Tactical Suitability of the P-47C-1:
(3) Manueverability -- The P-47C-1 was flown in mock combat against the P-38F, P-39D-1, P-40F and P-51.
(a) It had superior rate of aileron roll at all speeds, and especially at high speed to all American contemporary fighter types, none could follow it in a fast reverse turn.
P-47C Tactical Trials
Tactical Suitability of the P-47C-1:
(3) Manueverability -- The P-47C-1 was flown in mock combat against the P-38F, P-39D-1, P-40F and P-51.
(a) It had superior rate of aileron roll at all speeds, and especially at high speed to all American contemporary fighter types, none could follow it in a fast reverse turn.
P-47C Tactical Trials
Demetrious
Airman 1st Class
- 104
- Aug 22, 2007
That's odd. That chart shows the P-40 and the P-51 has superior roll at all speeds... at ten thousand feet, at least. Perhaps that test was done at higher altitude; I've heard that the P-40 and it's big wings really started to dominate the thinner the air got.
- Thread starter
- #95
Clay_Allison
Staff Sergeant
- 1,154
- Dec 24, 2008
I've read from many sources that after they introduced the paddle blade propeller, the climb rate became very respectable and the Germans were no longer able to use the climb as an easy out.
I know that quote was from before the new propeller was introduced.
Colin1
Senior Master Sergeant
Its wings might have, though I doubt it
its engine certainly didn't
- Thread starter
- #97
Clay_Allison
Staff Sergeant
- 1,154
- Dec 24, 2008
As a fighter, just about everything you read says the Jug was at its best at 30,000 feet.
Colin1
Senior Master Sergeant
Well then I'm confused
what are we talking about - the Jug or the P-40?
- Thread starter
- #99
Clay_Allison
Staff Sergeant
- 1,154
- Dec 24, 2008
No, I'm confused. How did the P-40 make it into this thread?
billswagger
Airman 1st Class
- 256
- Mar 12, 2009
i'd like to read more about this, do you have the source???
I pulled this off of Wiki
"Despite being the sole remaining P-47 group in the 8th Air Force, the 56th FG remained its(The Air Force) top-scoring group in aerial victories throughout the war."
and....
Warbird Alley: Republic P-47 Thunderbolt
this article attributes approximately 7,000 enemy fighter losses, air and ground, to the P-47 in ww2.
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