Favourite Naval Fighter

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ive never heard the corsiar was that dangerous and i wont believe it till he proves it
 
I saw a Wildcat in Palm Springs, many years ago. They showed me the bicycle chain, used to manually crank the wheels up and down. Gotta love that. My hats off to the pilots who were cranking that while doing one of the scariest and most difficult things in the world, which is doing a carrier landing.
So my vote goes to the Wildcat/Marlett. And of course because Airframes loves them as well, don't you, Terry?
 
cammerjeff said:
For some reason I have always Like the Fixed gear Curtiss BF2C's
Click to expand...

Yup, same here; a real beauty. Of WW2 though, my favourite has to be the Mitsubishi Zero. Yes, I know the F6F had a great kill to loss ratio, the Bearcat, Sea Fury Corsair etc could out perform it, but since I was a kid I've loved the Zero. My brother had a wee diecast toy Spitfire, and initially I wanted a Spitfire, but I was given a Zero and boy, I loved it.

This was me the day I got to sit in the cockpit of a Zero for the first time...

Empire of the Sun scene HD - Christian Bale salutes Japanese pilots - YouTube

A6M3 002

Cockpit Fwd
 
There's a long list of Naval fighters that served (or almost did) during the war and they all are, for the most part, impressive.

But for me, I choose the Dauntless.
Yes it was a scout/dive bomber, but it was also utilized as an interim CAP early in the war and downed many dive bombers and torpedo bombers that threatened the fleet.
 
PAT303 said:
Killed too many of it's own pilots, more died landing the thing than were shot down by the Japanese.
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It could be true?
Since they built about 12,500 of them and the Japanese only shot 189.

From Wiki
Corsair losses in World War II were as follows:

  • Aerial combat: 189
  • Enemy ground and shipboard anti-aircraft fire: 349
  • Operational losses during combat missions: 230
  • Operational losses during non-combat flights: 692
  • Destroyed aboard ships or on the ground: 164

Of course there are a number of planes that might be said of.

How many P-47s did the Germans (or Japanese ) shoot down in aerial combat ?

They made about 15,600 of them,
numbers lost when landing or taking off?

A Friend of mine's father crashed an F4U on take off in training. perhaps the plane saved his life. He was doing a night take off when some other men, returning from a night on the town, turned on a bank of flood lights near the runway. He lost his night vision, served off the runway, clipped a telephone pole with one wing, a parked bulldozer with the other. The plane hit a stack of concrete pipes and flipped over with the both the engine and tail parting company with the fuselage. The cockpit section came to rest upside down. He turned off the ignition and tank switches, released the harness and fell on his head. At least that is his story

Would he have survived in a lesser plane?
A lot of his squadron mates didn't make through the war due to accidents. Don't know if that was because of the F4U or in spite of the F4U.
You plow a plane into a hillside doing low level flying in training is it the planes fault?
He went on to fly with VNF-124 in the late part of the war.
 
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