I think I can squeeze in right here. It wasn't only that, Don. The U.S. didn't need carriers.
Unbelievable. Are you saying that if the Japanese had carriers, and the US chose, or lost their carriers, and did not build any, they could still win. If so, are you serious. Lets just look at the implications of this for a mnute. How would the US provide logistic support to it forward bases, including Hawaii if the Japanese have 10 carriers, and they have none. How does their fleet get around? An aircraft, even an F4 Phantom or F-15 Eagle, is useless if it lacks the fuel, the ammunition the construction materials, to build and supply airfields. Without a carrier fleet, the US isnt able to undertake effective force projection into enemy territory.
The nearest equivalent we have here is the 1943 situation, where neither side had an effective carrier fleet. Even with massive material superiority, the Allies struggled to control or make headway against the Japanese. And that was without either side having carriers. If the Japanese had a significant carrier force and the allies did not, the allies simply could not mount any offensive operations whatsoever,and would have been hard pressed to hold any ground the Japanese wewre truly determined to take.
Without carriers the US would have been forced to sue for peace on the japanese terms
To turn this tide, we needed what we built, the F6Fs and F4Us. This War wasn't a carrier-war. Strictly-speaking, it was an aircraft-war, and our F4Fs were outclassed.
No evidence to support that. The experiences of the RN clearly disprove that. Despite being chronically equipped with inferior fighters, and heavily outnumbered to boot, and faced by an opponent far more numerous and as dangerous as the japanese, the British did not lose a single carrier to air attack (except the inneffectual Hermes), and managed to challenge control of enemy controlled waters to the point of changing an entire campaign. Without carriers it was at the least, very difficult to excercise sea control. Exactly the same applies in the Pacific.
Having the Hellcat and F4U were big advantages, but not having a carrier was critical to the outcome of the war....F4Fs did have the runs on the board, and Japan was already in deep trouble ever before the Hellcat or the Corsair had time to make an effect. There is no evidence that Hellcats were responsible for their impressive killtallies, simply because of the performance of the aircraft. None. There is plenty of evidence, that the F4F, in the environments of the later ewar period were still effective aircraft, more than able to complete their allotted tasks and more than able to be effective, and chalk up reasonable kill tallies of their own.
The Pacific war was a war of aircraft, thats true, but the aircraft was so much more than a group of pilots poncing around from island to island shooting up japanese bases, or shooting down aircraft.
Even after we had upgraded in the FMs, those were outclassed.
Agreed, but what were the bad effects arising from that. I can show you many examples of Wildcats continuing to be very effective despite that obvious obsolescence.
And don't for a minute believe those F6Fs and F4Us racked up those batting averages against minor league pitching. The Japanese aircraft were still formidable. While their pilots had suffered a drop in terms of experience, understand, they had begun with vastly more experience.
Completely agree
And, in terms of pilot-training, they still had more in that aircraft than our pilots had in ours, right up through around the middle of 1944.
And yet, until about March 1944the major body blows to Japanese capability had been achieved by carriers armed with F4fs. This just serves to underline the fact that the hellcat, despite its obvious superiority, was not really needed to prosecute the japanese. Not so for the Carriers. They proved to be absolutely critical at every stage of the war.
We just embarrassed that aircraft and those pilots so badly in those F6Fs and F4Us that to this day they're still making excuses for it.
I dont think the japanese have got much to be embarrassed about. At iwo, for example, what do you do when you are hit by concentrated raids of 5 or 600 aircrafdt, each one of them with a pilot that on average has 10x the experience your group has, and still outnumbering you by more than 10:1 as well. If the Japanese had not been given the opportunity to recover after the '42 campaigns, the war would have eneded earlier, with or without the Hellcat. The Hellcat was one part of the US victory, but in the end, it was not a critical or essential part. There was no way of knowiung that early in the war,m but thats how it finished panning out.
The problem with the F4Fs and FMs was, they couldn't "go upstairs." While they remained "downstairs," they couldn't out-turn the A6Ms.
So what. To engage enemy fleets, the strike aircraft had to get low, all the action occurred below 10000 ft. Its a disadvantage, but a disadvantage that meant absolutely nothing to the outcome of the major battles.
We very well could have built more carriers and flooded those and the skies with F4Fs and FMs, but that would have been about the dumbest thing we ever did. And, do you know what? That's probably why we didn't do it.
One could argue with equal force that the dumbest thing the US ever did was forego carrier production in FY'41 so that they could design and build an aircraft they didnt really need. They took the path they did, because that was the prudent thing to do. Thats not what this discussion is about. Weve got it wrong anyway, but it has evolved into "was the hellcat necessary to win the war?" Answer is "No". To the supplementary issue youve raised in your last posting, "Carriers were not really necessary to win the war?" Are you kidding of course they were.