FAA Seafire vs Corsair

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Now we're talkin'... The decision of the Air Ministry not to issue the FAA with a single-seat fighter specification in the early to mid 1930s time period had enormous repercussions. That doesn't mean that US naval aircraft shouldn't be purchased if the Brits did get Seafires earlier. The more the merrier, but the pressure to get hold of decent carrier based fighters would not have been so high as they were in the first few years of the war.
 
You have to remember that Seafire development was canceled to get as many Spitfires into service as possible before the BoB, Joe Smith had drawings and designs before the war started but like everything Spitfire from the first day to the last production demands came before improvements.
 
Well there does also seem to be some kind of issue specifically with the FAA and their requirements. I seem to remember something about a reshuffling of decision making bodies shortly before the war. Was it that fleet admirals were deciding matters about aircraft? The two seat fighters, the low altitude engine power settings, persistence of biplanes... there seems to be some thing amiss at the planning stage. British manufacturers and navy personnel did a lot with what they got, (putting radar on Swordfish for example) but it seemed to be a lot of jamming square pegs into round holes.

Spitfire was never going to be an ideal naval fighter, IMO, simply because it was designed as a lightweight, fast (very streamlined), short range fighter.
 
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Admiral Beez said:
There was nothing in the Seafire that entered service in 1942 that was not reasonably feasible in 1939, albeit with a less powerful and differently blown Merlin.
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The 1939 time line is rather iffy.
Let's assume that you have enough constant speed props as a given or the the idea won't work to begin with.
you have an 880hp engine for take off with 87 octane fuel. In Jan of 1939 you know that 100 octane fuel is coming, you don't know when or exactly how much improvement you are going to get. As the months go by you are able to start planning the arrival of 100 octane and which airplanes are going to get it. You also start to get an idea of what the performance gains are going to be.
Yes the Merlin 45 used in the First Seafires used a different blower but it had 1185hp for take off, without using emergency power.
In 1939 (?) there was proposed version of the Merlin to use 100 octane that was rated at 1000hp for take-off using 8 1/4lbs boost. As the results came in from testing the existing Merlin IIIs with 100 octane fuel they found they could simply upgrade/up rate existing engines and a new version wasn't needed. But when did they know that?
There was an early proposed Merlin of the R.M.1 M type with a lower ratio on the supercharger to use 87 octane fuel that would give 1000hp for take-off using 6lns boost, but it would only give 1085hp at 9750ft and then decrease after that.
The engine (VIII) in the Fulmar I used an even lower supercharger gear ratio and was good for 1080hp for take-off at 5lbs boost on 87 octane fuel and about 1275hp at sea level using 9lbs of boost. This was a R.M 3 engine.
The R.M. 3S engine was the one used in the Spitfire MK II and was rated at 1175hp for take-off using 100 octane and 12lbs boost.

You may not need the Merlin 45 but the timing for the Seafire gets a bit tricky in 1939-40.
Admiral Beez said:
Skip the Fulmar, threaten the future Sir Charles Fairey with nationalization of his firm if he persists with his Fulmar folly
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All these threats against British manufactures wouldn't have changed much.
Just tell them what you want them to make and pay them for it. Just don't change your mind unless you are willing to pay for the raw materials, subcontracted parts and labor for the partially built stuff they have on hand when the air ministry changes their minds.
Remember the Hurricane story. Hawker went out on a limb and ordered raw materials and long lead items before the Air Ministry actually placed the order. If the Air Ministry had changed their minds and only ordered a hundred of so Hurricanes while they waited for BP Defiants (or whatever the flavor of the day for turret fighters was) Hawker might have faced bankruptcy.
Fairey and company would pretty much make anything the Air Ministry told them to make if they thought they could make money doing it.
Fairey got an order for 127 Fulmars in mid 1938. It took until Jan 1940 for the first one to fly.
When do you cancel all the parts and tooling already in process of making the Fulmars and how long is it going to take to set up the Seafire production line.
Somebody can "say" they had the wing fold all worked out and ready to go but let's face facts. Supermarine (Vickers) was making Spitfires in very small batches or constantly changing things even as they were building the first hundreds. Something that drove Castle Bromwich nuts. Granted their management wasn't the best but the constant flow of change drawings for minor items would have been a problem for any 3rd production line. It is either that or the Seafire as building in late 1939-40 becomes increasing deforced from the Spitfire production standard. A lot less interchangeability with the land based aircraft. How important this is?????

Look at Eastern Aircraft and the Wildcat. There were literally hundreds of drawings to change from the 4 gun to the six gun wing.

Do you want Fairey to make "Seafires" or do you want them to make a single seat carrier plane that just sort of looks like a Spitfire from medium distance?

And we haven't even gotten into the A wing with eight machine guns or the B wing, which one do you figure out how to fold up in 1939? You know the 20mm guns are coming but they don't show up in any real numbers all the way through 1940.

And what do you do for scout aircraft, the often ignored role the Fulmar played in chase of the Bismarck.

In the Med in 1940 an early Seafire will outperform anything the Italians have got. It better as the early Seafire is going to have to land twice as often to refuel and rearm.

There were reasons the ammo capacity and fuel capacity was spelled out the way it was. It may have been wrong (lord knows the carrier turret fighter was a bad idea) but a 1939
Seafire with eight .303 guns with 300rpg and 85 gallons of fuel was not be a total replacement for the needed fighters.
 
The RN did not obtain full control of the FAA from the RAF until 24th May 1939. Just over 3 months before the outbreak of WW2. At that point it officially became the Air Branch of the Royal Navy (but was still referred to as the FAA until it again officially became the FAA in the 1950s).

Before that the story of naval aviation 1918-1939 saw a difficult relationship between the two services. The name tells you much. It was the Fleet Air Arm of the RAF, with all aviation matters decided by the Air Ministry. In theory the Admiralty had an input but it didn't have the technical knowledge. The RAF, as the new kid on the block, sought to monopolise aviation related matters. The RAF didn't have a huge interest in naval aviation, seeing it as peripheral to its mainstream bomber force development. That was even though the cost of the FAA aircraft came from the naval budget. And that lack of interest meant its preference was to provide the FAA with aircraft based on RAF types.

By way of example of the RAF attitude was that in the 1920s they set up joint committees to determine the requirements for aircraft for the FAA. But all the technical people were from the Air Ministry. RN input was limited by the AM to relatively junior RN officers.

Pilots were supposed to be 50/50 from RAF/RN with the navy providing the Observers. In the 1920s the largest FAA unit was the Flight because the RAF determined how many aircraft could be operated from a ship.It was 1933 before Flights amalgamated into squadrons after the RN demonstrated that carriers could operate more aircraft than the RAF believed.

And career wise there were very few aviation positions for RN officers above flight / squadron leadership (Lt Commander). So anyone wanting to continue an RN career had to move to another specialism. In 1918 almost all the aviation qualified officers transferred to the RAF leaving the RN with minimal talent. To gain command of an aircraft carrier pre-war required rank and seniority. In practice that meant c30 years of service. So it was about 1942 before officers who had qualified in the earliest FAA courses in the 1920s, and already had c10 years of RN service before that, began to reach the level of captaining RN carriers.

But even after 1939 actual production was controlled by the Air Ministry until the Ministry of Aircraft Production took over in May 1940. And again the FAA had to play second fiddle to the RAF.

The relationship and it's effects is complicated. The correction of the damage done to naval aviation in Britain that was done on 1 April 1918, didn't begin to change until the Inskip Report in Dec 1937. The transfer couldn't happen overnight. 17 months later the RN gets what it wanted. But change takes time, which turned out not to be available before the outbreak of WW2.
 
Interesting, so it sounds like the fault lay more with the RAF not being interested in or understanding naval use of aircraft, almost the opposite of what I thought.

Surely the Skua, Fulmar, and Swordfish were not RAF types right? It seems like maybe mostly the fighters (Sea Gladiator, Sea Hurricane, Seafire)? And where does Coastal Command fit into this picture?
 
Coastal and maritime patrol was purely an RAF matter after 1 April 1918 on the formation of the RAF. Post WW1 the extensive network of squadrons and bases was heavily cut back to a bare bones of only a few squadrons of flying boats. It became Coastal Command in 1936. By 1939 it consisted of a few flying boat squadrons, 2 Vildebeest TB squadrons with the remainder, c12, equipped with Ansons. The Sunderland & Hudson were only just entering service and the Lerwick, Beaufort and Botha were on order. The focus was on the east coast of Britain and the North Sea. The First Lord of the Admiralty described it in 1940 as the "Cinderella Service".

I said the preference was to use derivatives of RAF types but that was not always possible. So you have the Hawker Fury and Naval Nimrod derivative, the Hawker Hart and Naval Osprey derivative (there was a whole range of fighter, light bomber and army co-operation derivatives of the Hart from around 1930), Fairey IIIF, Gordon & Seal etc. In the 1930s the combination of RN roles required entirely new types developed. For example the RAF didn't have a dive bomber.

When it comes to carrier fighters the development path in the RN is complicated. The use of the two seat fighter did have a logic to it in the pre-radar, morse radio days when spotting an enemy strike on the fleet depended on the Mk.I eyeball and carriers couldn't carry enough fighters to maintain standing patrols. I'll see if I can find time tomorrow to post some more detail on this.

Edit. The RN only had control of FAA aircraft when they went aboard a carrier inter war. The rest of the time they were an RAF responsibility. All maintenance personnel were RAF, even aboard ship. In May 1939 the RN inherited only 4 airfields from the RAF. It had to convert 2 squadrons (1 fighter & 1 TSR) from Courageous to second line training duties etc in May 1939. It really was building all its background support from almost nothing. It retained many RAF personnel well into the war years.
 
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Wild_Bill_Kelso said:
Surely the Skua, Fulmar, and Swordfish were not RAF types right? It seems like maybe mostly the fighters (Sea Gladiator, Sea Hurricane, Seafire)?
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Skua was an RN type. It showed up late and for some reason they thought they "next type" would replace it but the dive bomber part somewhat disappeared. Yeah, we are told that Swordfish could dive bomb.

Fulmar was improvisation. It wasn't what the RN wanted, but they had decided that the Skua wasn't going to the "fighter" job and it would take 3-4 years to get what they wanted and they didn't have 3-4 years. What could be done was take an RAF tactical bomber prototype (which the RAF didn't want anymore) fir it with eight .303 guns and a folding wing and short cut the 3-4 year development cycle. Unfortunately the they could not delivered the production Fulmars as soon as they thought which lead to the Sea Gladiator which, actually being in production (mostly) could be delivered in a few months and not years. Not what was wanted but what they could get.

Swordfish was an RN type. But it showed little or no advance over the plane it replaced, except perhaps, it was cheaper and/or easier to maintain? It turns out it had a bit better low speed handling for bad weather operations but I am not sure that was in the original specifications or more of a happy circumstance.

Sea Gladiator, as above, Just enough planed ordered to fit a few squadrons until the already ordered Fulmars could be delivered.

Sea Hurricane, same thing only more so. It was in production and available. Turned out it had decent low speed handling and was fairly rugged and since the replacement for the interim Fulmar, which was the plane that would become the Firefly was now not going to be available until 1943 (?) years after they had hoped they had to use something, anything.

Seafire. More of the same. The Sea Hurricane was much better than the Sea Gladiator but that was not saying a whole lot. That is not quite fair but they were drawing pictures of airplane with Griffon or Sabre engines (some with turrets) and eight to twelve .303 guns or four 20mm cannon in 1939. Compared to the "paper" airplanes the Sea Hurricane was strictly 2nd rate but since the "paper" Airplanes didn't exist it was the Sea Hurricane and the Seafire. The "Paper" airplanes staggered along to finally become the Firefly (way under powered or overweight, take your pick, in the MK 1 Version ) which didn't become operational (in combat) until July 1944. The other "Paper" airplane, laughing called a Base defense fighter (like it wasn't actually going to be put on carrier?) after a number of twists and turns wound up like this


No explanation of why the land base fighter needed such a big flap system shows up in short histories.
Or why the land base naval defence fighter needed a wing over 20% bigger than P-47 wing?

Wild_Bill_Kelso said:
And where does Coastal Command fit into this picture?
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That depends on who you ask.
Bomber Command may not have come right out and said so, although they came close, that CC was a waste of resources that BC could use to destroy German subs on the building slips or material bound for German ships could be destroyed in the factories.
And with asdic it was the Royal navies job to sink the few U boats that Bomber command didn't destroy in the building slips or in harbor. We know that worked out.
we also know it didn't need hindsight as hundreds float planes/flying boats and land based aircraft were used in WW I for convoy escort. The WW I aircraft didn't sink much but in the last 6 months or so of the war very, very few ships in convoys escorted by aircraft were sunk.
But not getting sunk doesn't make good headlines in the daily papers. Or get large sums of money from the treasury.

So CC sort of was trapped in no-mans land. It was part of the RAF as far as manpower and budget went but it was viewed as a distraction from Bombing the enemy or preventing the enemy from bombing Britain.
 

Why did the Firefly (and I guess the Fulmar too) take so long to get into production? Bad initial design? Contradictory / impossible / changing requirements? And then there is the dreadful Barracuda. Yikes. And such a waste of a good name. How did they end up with that Chimera?

Wow that's a fascinating, if ungaily looking bird. What is that? Firebrand? What is the roll rate on that puppy?

Speaking of which EwenS, I had to look this baby up



Saunders-Roe A.36 Lerwick - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Can't believe I never heard of it before. Nice looking plane it's too bad it seems to have been a bit of a dud. They got lucky with the Sunderland, but surely the had long traditions of big flying boats.

Also while trying to find that mystery plane, I blundered across this magnificently hideous beast. I thought only the early 20th Century French made planes this ugly?



Very interesting. It's amazing how well they ultimately did in their very important job, though granted it took a while to get it together.
 
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The British, in general, were chronically understaffed in regards to engineers, draftsmen and technical people. Perhaps the US was too in 1938-39 but the US was larger country, had a larger industrial base to draw on and had 1939-40 to catch up.
The Firefly was put on hold for several reasons. One was that RR put the Griffon engine on hold for a while in 1940 while they concentrated on the Merlin. Fairey was trying to handle several programs at once. They were trying to farm out Swordfish production while building the Fulmar and they were trying to improve the Fulmar (like fit a more powerful engine which needed a bigger radiator and oil cooler) to give them time to work on the Firefly AND they were trying get the Barracuda to work and that one may have gotten caught in the Griffon shuffle.
It was definitely caught in an engine shuffle of some sort having been designed for the RR EXE 24 cylinder sleeve valve engine. Rolls-Royce Exe - Wikipedia
Since nearly every plane gains weight as it goes through development perhaps the EXE was too small any way but the first Merlins tried in the Barracuda were too small. With the Griffon running behind all they could do was try boosting the Merlin.

Changing/difficult requirements didn't help the Firefly.
Wild_Bill_Kelso said:
Wow that's a fascinating, if ungaily looking bird. What is that? Firebrand?
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Yes and again the British fell victim to lack of resources. There were a crap load of British planes that were supposed to use the Sabre engine (or use the RR Vulture) in 1938-1940 but development dragged on and some planes were simply canceled and others looked for alternative power plants. When Blackburn was told there would be no more Sabres for the Firebrand (top photo from the rear) as ALL Sabre production was earmarked for the Typhoon/Tempest, they went for the Centaurus radial to save the plane. Changing requirement (it looked like the Spitfire could do the day interceptor role) lead to the government suggesting an 15-16 in splice in the wing in-between the landing gear so it would hold an 18in torpedo. By the time they got the results to work the war was over.
Wild_Bill_Kelso said:
Can't believe I never heard of it before. Nice looking plane it's too bad it seems to have been a bit of a dud. They got lucky with the Sunderland, but surely the had long traditions of big flying boats.
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the Lerwick more than a bit a bit of dud. It was an outright menace to it's crews.
"The Lerwick was immediately found to be unstable in the air, on the water and not suited to "hands off" flying. The latter was a major problem in an aircraft designed for long-range patrols."
"failed to remedy its undesirable characteristics, which included a vicious stall and unsatisfactory rates of roll and yaw"
"On one engine the Lerwick could not maintain height, nor could it maintain a constant heading, as the controls could not counter the torque of one engine on maximum power.[9]​ An engine failure would inevitably see the aircraft flying in slowly descending circles"

A twin engine plane that cannot maintain height on one engine and cannot fly a strait course on one engine has no business fly more than few miles off shore.
It is one thing to try and fix a few things, the Lerwick had too many problems. Even with more powerful engines you needed larger vertical fin and rudder to steer a straight course (and maybe better ailerons) and trying to land a large, heavy flying boat that has a viscous stall sounds like a rash of landing accidents waiting to happen.

Wild_Bill_Kelso said:
Very interesting. It's amazing how well they ultimately did in their very important job, though granted it took a while to get it together.
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The crews, as many British crews did, performed very well considering the problems they were dealing with. Unfortunately the problems often included ineffective anti-sub bombs and aircraft/engine/propeller combinations that were not really safe for long over water fights.
 
Wild_Bill_Kelso said:
Interesting, so it sounds like the fault lay more with the RAF not being interested in or understanding naval use of aircraft, almost the opposite of what I thought.
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I can't add much to what's been posted already, but the Air Ministry rather than the RAF was responsible for military air matters. It wasn't as simple as a misunderstanding, as the Air Min bods were advised by the Admiralty, after all, the Admiralty wrote the requirements but not the specifications - they'd say "we need a single-seat carrier fighter, and a long range observation aeroplane that can operate from ships' catapults, and we need a dive bomber and a new torpedo bomber." To which the Air Ministry said "here's a fighter/dive bomber (Skua), here's a single-seat fighter that comes with an observer and can be operated from a ship's catapult (Fulmar) and here's a torpedo dive bomber reconnaissance aeroplane (Barracuda) because there's only enough space on a carrier for a few types rather than type specific aircraft and we need to save deck space..."

The problem was peacetime, if that could be considered a problem, but money was tight for the military between the wars and each of the services attempted to justify their existence in the wake of the Great War. The RAF did so by the sheer determination of Trenchard and co as they realised that following the massive losses on the front the army would need rebuilding and the navy, having just gotten rid of a shed ton of obsolete warships needed modern stuff like aircraft carriers. So, the RAF needed to justify its existence and because money was tight the navy's aviation needs took second fiddle, and because Britain only had a handful of carriers.

Wild_Bill_Kelso said:
And where does Coastal Command fit into this picture?
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The duties of coastal patrol were all a part of the RNAS' (Royal Naval Air Service) duties during the Great War, so the roles of maritime patrol came under the RAF jurisdiction from April 1918 onwards. Coastal Command as a separate structure was created in 1936, at the same time Fighter Command and Bomber Command was created. It was a structural overhaul of the RAF for admin purposes. The roles of the commands were obvious as per their names, and meant that rather than just having different squadrons operating different aeroplanes to do different jobs as was the case beforehand, the different commands would coordinate role specific duties.

The 200 series RAF squadrons were former RNAS units incorporated into the RAF to avoid numerical clashes, there was a 1 Sqn RFC and a 1 Sqn RNAS, and so these 200 series squadrons became maritime units. For example, 1 Sqn RNAS was a fighter unit operating Sopwith Triplanes, but became 201 Sqn and operated Southampton flying boats for maritime patrol. Today it still exists and operates the Poseidon.

Because of the aforementioned lack of money and aircraft carriers, land based maritime patrol and torpedo carriers became a thing aside from seaplanes and flying boats and/or aircraft carrier based assets for the same, which most of the world was building. Coastal Command was designed to coordinate its operation with the Admiralty as well, so it was a bit more nautically inclined than its brethren within the other commands.
 
Probably the biggest delay to the Firefly was the confusion surrounding what the Admiralty actually wanted.

The original specs N.8/39 and N.9/39 (2 seat fighter & turret fighter respectively) were issued by the Air Ministry in early 1939. A number of companies tendered for one or other or both by late in the year. Then the Admiralty began reviewing what it wanted and word of that leaked out to the industry. Then in Nov/Dec the Admiralty rejected ALL the submissions, decided they didn't want a new turret fighter, but did want both a single seater and a two seater but based on the same airframe and sent everyone back to the drawing board. A meeting of the Admiralty and all the interested companies then took place on, IIRC, 5 Jan 1940 to select a winner.

So over at Fairey, the initial 1939 submissions were designed by Marcelle Lobelle which bore at least a passing resemblance to the Fulmar. By the end of the year he was in the process of leaving the company to be replaced by HE Chaplin. According to Harrison in "Fairey Firefly" Chaplin had to start with a clean sheet of paper and the eventual design was the better for it!

Given the timescale involved, Dec 1939 to Jan 1940, none of the companies would have had time to prepare more than outline designs for presentation to the Admiralty. At that Jan meeting the Admiralty chose the two seat Fairey design that went on to become the Firefly. A new spec, N.5/40, was written around that proposal and an order for 200 placed by June 1940.

So the Firefly went from pure paper proposal to flying prototype inside 2 years (first flight 22 Dec 1941) in the middle of a war with the crisis of mid-1940. But there were then handling problems to resolve and delays over what version was required by the Admiralty (basic fighter or long nosed night fighter NF.II, with the latter eventually being dropped). Production began at low rates in late 1942, but the first squadron didn't form until Sept 1943. By the end of the war only 7 squadrons had been equipped with them incl 3 night fighter, of which only the first 3 saw combat.

At that same Jan 1940 meeting, the Admiralty considered that the single seat Blackburn proposal powered by a Bristol Hercules engine was also worth pursuing. So again a new spec was written around it but specifying the more powerful Napier Sabre engine in June 1940 and an initial order for 50 awarded. It first flew in Feb 1942 but again suffered from handling problems. Then the Admiralty decision that, since the Seafire was available it should become a torpedo fighter requiring a redesign, then the Air Ministry decision to divert all Sabre engines to Typhoon resulting in another redesign for a new engine.

Mid-1940 then sees the RN requesting Spitfires again, and looking to the USA with an order for an initial 100 G-36B Martlet II for delivery in 1941 (at the same time it inherited the Martlet I from the French order).

"Farming out" Swordfish production was the least of Fairey's worries. The Admiralty wanted Blackburn to become a second source for Albacore production (400 aircraft). Then in Nov 1939 realised that, with Swordfish production coming to an end at Fairey Hayes factory, if the Swordfish jigs (7,000 sets of tools were eventually involved) were passed to Blackburn then they could get 400 less resource hungry Swordfish sooner. They were prepared to accept the loss of performance to get the aircraft earlier. But it still meant an approx 11 month production gap. Fairey would have had a much bigger task helping Blackburn set up an Albacore line.

The Barracuda was a real headache for Fairey. Aug 1939 RR suspends development work on the Boreas/Exe engine. So the air cooled Boreas/Exe has to be replaced with a heavier liquid cooled Merlin with all the added extra weight of its radiators etc. That represented a major redesign. That is probably about the time that design team would be winding down work on that design as it moved to the prototyping stage. In mid-1939 it was scheduled to succeed the Fulmar on the production line at Fairey's Heaton Chapel, Stockport factory in April 1941, with production scheduled to last 12 months before a successor aircraft would have emerged. In fact production didn't begin until April 1942 and continued until 1946. The successor spec wasn't issued until 1943 (O.5/43 that led to the Fairey Spearfish, first flight 5 July 1945). In more normal times a successor spec would have been expected around 1940.

In common with much of the British aircraft industry, Fairey was also taking on additional responsibilities. It took over an ex vehicle factory adjacent to its Stockport factory as a Govt owned shadow factory for licence production of Beaufighter and Halifax aircraft from early 1941.

Another matter to consider, which gives some indication of the size of the Fairey operation in 1939, is the production rates. Peacetime rates were expected to be in the order of 15-20 fighters and 35-40 TSR per month. The Air Ministry expected, in 1939, that wartime production rates would see these doubled. Having said that Fairey Heaton Chapel did not complete its last Battle order until around Sept 1940.
 
Background to the Sea Gladiator acquisition. Remember Inskip reported at the end of 1937. There were 38 Sea Gladiator Interim followed by 60 Sea Gladiator II delivered late 1938/early 1939 with the latter issued first to 801 & 802 squadrons on Courageous and Glorious. Thanks to NewGolconda over on the NavWeaps forum for this summary.


Summarised from Hobbs Dawn of Carrier Strike.

***

A Directorate of Air Material (DAM) was established within the Admiralty in January 1938 tasked with forming staff requirements for new material, including aircraft, to meet Admiralty policy. It was composed of a mixture of executive officers with flying experience, some of the more senior members being observers, and technical officers and, unlike other Admiralty technical departments, it reported to an executive officer, ACNS (Air).

There was serious concern that the remaining 61 Osprey and Nimrod fighter/scouts were insufficient to sustain the FAA fighter force. On 2 February 1938 the Admiralty wrote to the Air Council informing it that if, as at that time appeared likely, the Blackburn Skua and Roc 'proved to be aerodynamically unsound the fighting strength of the Fleet Air Arm would be almost negligible until the end of 1939 when the converted P4/34 (fulmar)was expected to be available'.3 The Admiralty asked whether, if an emergency arose before that time, the Air Council would be prepared to supply 'the greatest possible number of Gladiators', modified as necessary to operate from carriers.

On 15 February the Air Council decided that in an emergency it would try to meet the Admiralty's request 'but whether this could, in the event, be done would depend on the home defence situation and the Government of the day would have to decide on the relative priority of the requirements of the two Services'. They did decide, however, to order an additional fifty Gladiators to cover the probable shortage of fighters in the RAF in 1939 but also, partly, to meet the Admiralty's request. Following the government approval of aircraft procurement scheme L this order was increased to 350.

Even before the Air Council reply was sent, however, it received another letter from the Admiralty which pointed out that even if the Skua and Roc proved to be satisfactory there would still be a serious shortage of fighters in the Fleet Air Arm in the latter part of 1938. It was asked, therefore, if two squadrons of modified Gladiators with full reserves could be lent to the Fleet Air Arm as soon as possible and remain on loan until the shortage was overcome.

At a meeting between 5SL, Vice Admiral Sir Alexander Ramsay, and the Air Member for Supply and Organisation, Air Vice Marshal William Welsh, it was pointed out that the agreed establishment of Fleet Air Arm fighter squadrons was, at the time, three squadrons with a total of thirty-three operational aircraft and a further fifty-two in reserve, a total of eighty-five.
 
Reading back through this thread, I'm beginning to sense that the RN/FAA didn't have a clearly defined vision for the role of the aircraft carrier and this shows in the types of aircraft being designed and flip flopping in design specs. Thinking about the Corsair vs Seafire part of this thread, the Corsair must have been a real boon to the FAA especially given its capacity as a multi-role platform. Ordnance capacity (other than the torpedo) is on par with the Barracude and well above the Seafire all the while being able to serve as an air superiority fighter. One could imagine that if enough had been available that you could have seen carriers with a majority of Corsairs and very few other types.
 
The USN was hanging onto biplane fighters well after the RN. The USN finally equipped its VF squadrons just in time for Pearl Harbor. If the US had entered the war in September 1939 all its fighter squadrons would have been flying F3Fs into battle. Something like 1/2 the dive bomber squadrons were also flying biplanes. As I have pointed out previously the USN standard torpedo bomber was a monoplane with the performance of a biplane.
 
it's interesting to kind of contrast this with Japanese and American approaches.

The Japanese had medium to long range scout / recon planes, some with air to air fighting capability and some not, in a similar niche to the Fulmar, but they didn't operate them from carriers. Instead they were float planes or land based. Ki-15, Ki-30, Ki-32, and Ki-52 were all kind of at least moderately successful land based scout aircraft. A couple, like the Ki-15 had surprisingly good performance (300 mph, allegedly). These are a mix of Army and Navy types (some used by both branches) originally used mostly in China but often pressed into service in the Pacific.

The only recon plane I can think of which flew from carriers was the Nakajima C6N Saiun aka "Myrt" which had very good performance (380 mph top speed, almost 5,000 km range) but it came too late to be of much use in the war. The Army had the equally fast twin engined Ki-46 of course which caused the Allies some problems for a while but it seemed to become victim of Allied fighters fairly often by the mid-war. The Japanese also had the interesting land based Kyushu Q1W which was a dedicated ASW plane.

They had their series of float planes which flew from cruisers and battleships, probably the most successful of which was the E13A , followed by the increasingly interesting but never really fully developed E14, E15, and E16

Then they had the armed scouts which side from land based fighter types (the A6M, with it's excellent range, made a good scout) And of course they had their bombers, which were used a lot for scouting until around late 1942 when they started getting shot down too much, and their heavy fighter the Ki-45 which had good range, so it made a decent armed scout, though nowhere near the firepower of a Beaufighter and seemed to be highly vulnerable to P-40s etc..

The Japanese had float / seaplane fighters like the excellent A6M2-N, the even better N1K1 of course, and the adequate F1M "Pete" biplane. These were all pretty good as fighters but had short range for a scout. The F1M was probably fairly similar in it's niche to both a Sea Gladiator and Sea Hurricane. The Allies really had nothing like the A6M2-N or N1K1 floatplane unless you count the (far too late to matter) Currtiss SC.

and their big flying boats like the H6 (similar to a PBY) and the H8K, which is a pretty close analogue for a Sunderland.

I guess the Japanese ultimately didn't need a carrier based scout in the early war because they had the Zero, which worked as an excellent armed scout. Only when the Zero started getting out matched and especially outrun, did they perceive the need for a dedicated carrier based scout in the C6N, but that came to late to be useful. I think a Zero definitely makes a better armed scout than a Fulmar though in every respect.

I think they made good use of float planes, in which they were superior to both the US and RN I'd say.

With flying boats it was similar, the Sunderland was very good though slower than a H8K. The PBY was very reliable and good enough, the Anglo-Amnerican / ANZAC forces also had the very useful Hudson, and later the faster but a little more flawed Ventura; then they had the Navalized B-24 (PB4Y) which proved very helpful as an armed scout with it's excellent range. The Allies also had the superb Beaufighter which I think really proved very useful, the B-17s which were quite good as heavy long range scouts, with endurance similar to a PBY but much tougher if they got caught by fighters. P-38s also made good armed scouts, and the various US naval bomber and fighter types, of which I think the F4U IIRC had the best range for a figther and the TBF /TBM was probably the most useful as a scout-bomber / ASW.

Skua, Swordfish, Albacore and Sea Gladiator, Sea Hurricane, and Seafire all had very short range so not so great as scouts. But good in a fight. Swordish (and Albacaore?) also had radar pretty early on, though they also ended up putting that on TBFs, F6Fs and a lot of land based planes.


Of all those, I'd give this list for the best Recon / Scout types that actually had an impact in the war in the Pacific, based purely on my capricious opinion.

Scout-fighters, land based, single engine
A6M, then way down the list, F4F and P-40, then once it became available, F4U, P51

Scout-fighters, twin engine
Beaufighter, P-38, Ki-45

Scout-fighters, carrier based
A6M, ...then way down the list, F4F, Fulmar... later when they became available, F6F and F4U but range wasn't so great.

Seaplane scouts
E13 kind of stands alone here I think

Seaplane fighters
A6M2-N, F1M

Scout bombers, single engine
TBF, SBD, D4Y, D3A (rating the US types a bit better because they are a bit harder to shoot down)

Scout bombers, multi-engine
B-17, B-24, Wellington, Beaufort, Hudson, Ventura, G4M.... G3M and Ki-21 a bit further down the list because so vulnerbale. Maybe Ki-49 and Ki-48 might be good in this niche

Flying boats
H8K, Sunderland, PBY, H6K
 

All fair points, although they got the F4F which was better than any RN fighter in time ... TBD was definitely a dud.
 
ASV (Air to Surface Vessel) Radar first became available in early 1940. ASV.I was fitted to Hudson's and Sunderland's. Improved ASV.II appeared in late 1940 and began to be fitted to Swordfish in early 1941. Some of those involved in the Bismarck chase were so fitted.

There were technical problems getting ASV.II to work on the Albacore, so it was only fitted to them from very late in 1941. I've been looking for an exact reason for several years now but so far have found nothing. Hence the reason why Indomitable had a couple of radar equipped Swordfish added to her air group during Operation C, the Japanese raid into the IO in March/April 1942.
 

Well it was certainly a neat trick. It made all those aircraft much more useful especially the 'stringbag'. More or less turns into a day / night all weather attack plane too right?
 
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