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- #261
Fighter: Flop or Not
- Thread starter Zipper730
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swampyankee
Chief Master Sergeant
- 3,954
- Jun 25, 2013
Bell Airacuda.
fubar57
General
Boulton Paul Defiant as a fighter, slightly better flop as a nightfighter
Shortround6
Major General
Made a hell of a target tug.........................not!
Shortround6
Major General
A flop why?
1. Bad air frame?
2. Bad engine/s?
3. Bad armament/electronics?
Post war the number of actual flops was pretty small and most could be tied to reasons 2 & 3.
There are exceptions
Inspiration for Star Wars pod racers?
Converting a piston engine plane to jets wasn't always a good idea
Believe it or not, these were carrier planes.
The Chance Vought F7U might be considered a flop
First went to sea in non-testing deployments in late 1955, out off 320 built all were retired by the end of 1959.
A lot of prototypes/experimentals were flops, but that is what they are are for. To push the boundaries of knowledge or technical limits of the time.
Production programs of scores or hundreds of aircraft that have to be yanked from service and scrapped or shuffled off to 3rd/4th tier duties (instructional airframe) were rare post war.
A lot ot the weapons systems of the late 40s and the 50s left something (a lot of something) to be desired but that was not the responsibility of either the airframe maker or the engine maker.
- Thread starter
- #266
Agreed
Yeah, I'd support that
You forgot bad handling (both in flight and landing), bad human-factors issues (who knows), some factors are specific to whether it's a carrier plane or not.
What plane was this?
Shortround6
Major General
It would take really bad handling to turn a fighter into a flop. The French D 520 was noted for some not so good handling in the air and truly vicious handling on the ground and yet doesn't seem to be considered a flop. The German use of captured versions as advanced trainers might have been pushing things.
A number of fighters had bad human factors in WW II, The 109s small cockpit for one yet it is not considered a flop.
Any fighter with truly bad handling probably never made it past the prototype stage. There weren't that many fighters that were ordered off the drawing board, For the US the P-47 and P-61 may have been the only production fighters ordered off the drawing boards and having too much momentum in the program to stop.
The F4U was a miserable plane for carrier landing to begin with, they did get it sorted out after a while, IS it a flop or not?
The Centre NC 1070 (piston) and Centre NC 1071 (jet).
Oddly, I've read the NC 1071 had superb handling despite its shape - being described as "ugly but pleasant to fly with good performance".
What was lacking - from what I've read - is the French at this point, didn't have an aircraft carrier for it.
The projected fighter version was to be the NC 1072 with slightly swept wings - never proceeded with.
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- #269
Probably true, but it still qualifies as a factor...Shortround6 said:
I don't really know anything about the D.520 except basically what it looks like, so I couldn't render an opinion.
No, but remember it was still able to be effectively used...
The plane first flew in 1940, the first variants to enter service (1942) were not carrier suitable, but by 1943 they were proposing carrier operations but there was some logistic reason they didn't do it. I would say that for carrier handling, it was a flop, but on the totality, it was still a good fighter in the land-based type.
Okay... such a weird looking planeGraeme said:
So it was not a flop per se, it just lacked a place to land
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