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OTOH, the lack of a rearward facing observer would probably increase it's vulnerability against fighters and possibly reduce the chances of finding opponents in poor visibility situations.
A rear facing observer was nothing but ballast in day fighters unless that observer was working an airborne radar set.
So I guess the Spitfire, Hurricane, Me 109, P-38, P-47, P-51 FW 190, Zero, Corsair, Hellcat should have all been two seat fighters?!?!?I disagree. There are accounts of Fulmars evading superior numbers of nominally superior SE fighters, due to the observer giving warning and advising which way to turn to evade attack. It defies logic that having an extra pair of eyes looking aft, would not aid the pilot in evading attack, given that most SE aircraft downed were attacked in their rear blind spot.
To me, removing the observer says we could shorten the aircraft, allowing for a new-design, shorter set of wings and better streamliing with all the armament being forward-firing. It allows for considerable performance increase, but it wouldn't be a Fulmar ... as implied above.
So I guess the Spitfire, Hurricane, Me 109, P-38, P-47, P-51 FW 190, Zero, Corsair, Hellcat should have all been two seat fighters?!?!?
Have you ever flown in the rear of an aircraft when it starts doing aerobatic maneuvers? At that point those extra eyes are nothing more than tear buckets...
Because rarely would any aircraft fly in a straight line when it's being attacked, whether it had an observer, a tail gunner or the entire L.A. Dodgers' team sitting in the back seat...And why would an aircraft be doing aerobatic manoeuvres if it didn't see the attacking aircraft? Are you saying that rear gunners in two seat aircraft cannot also warn the pilot of impending attack, as well as shooting back?
Ie the Seafire.
Fairey was asked to navalise the Spitfire, but they didn't want to.
Because rarely would any aircraft fly in a straight line when it's being attacked, whether it had an observer, a tail gunner or the entire L.A. Dodgers' team sitting in the back seat...
Source?
We've already discussed the fact that Fairey could provide a folding wing Fulmar in early 1940 or a folding wing Spitfire sometime after that, but not both. As it turned out it was the RAF that balked at diverting Spitfire production to the FAA, especially given the general scarcity of the Spitfire in 1940 due to ongoing production difficulties.
Of course we know that it simply wasn't possible to adequately navalize the Spitfire airframe while keeping weight low enough for the Merlin, and even much strengthened late/post war Seafire variants with the Griffon engine, were not quite as robust as hoped for.
Morgan and Shacklady.
Supermarines submitted a proposal for a navalised Spitfire in 1938 with folding wings. The wings folded to sit parallel with the fuselage, similar to the Grumman F4F. These were to be built by Fairey, not modified versions of the Spitfire.
We do?
FWIW, the Fulmar weighed more empty than a Spitfire V's auw. Why could the Merlin cope with a fully laden Fulmar, but not a Seafire?
Sure the Seafire would lose performance compared to the Spitfire, but it would still in a different league to a Fulmar - single seat or otherwise.
The folding wing Seafire III didn't enter production until mid/late 1943 and it turned out to be a less than robust design despite the fact that it was greatly strengthened over the Spitfire V and had access to ~1500hp engines to help compensate for the extra weight.
Everything we know about the Seafire tells us that it wouldn't have been a successful design in 1940 especially since Supermarine couldn't even build Spitfires in any quantity in the same time frame.
What ever happened to the Supermarine backward folding wing?
The Seafire's airframe/LG simply wasn't strong enough for carrier operations and adequately strengthening it meant increasing the weight to the point that carrier TO and landings would become problematic for the small wing area, not to mention it's other problems.
The 3 FAA pilots interviewed regarding Sea Hurricane Z7015 all agreed that the Seafire wasn't robust enough for carrier operations, unlike the Sea Hurricane and the Fulmar.
You're really beating a dead horse here, as there's no way that a better Seafire would miraculously emerge in 1940, given the intensive work on it even years later, that failed to make it into a sufficiently robust carrier fighter.
They can if they could see the attacker and many times they did warn the pilots of a pending attack, I give you that but that slight advantage is outweighed by the technical and operational disadvantage of a rear facing observer. You're trying to embrace an aerial combat concept that eventually got left behind due to aircraft development.And why would an aircraft be doing aerobatic manoeuvres if it didn't see the attacking aircraft? Are you saying that rear gunners in two seat aircraft cannot also warn the pilot of impending attack, as well as shooting back?
I don't want to argue this endlessly, but having a rear facing observer obviously has benefits in combat, and those benefits have to be weighed against the increase in performance obtainable by omitting the observer. There were other benefits in terms of making the aircraft more suitable for recon and patrol work, especially in the absence of radar which led to the two seat spec, but it's obvious that the RN was not wedded to that concept, as per the document here:
Fulmar: Development â€" Armoured Aircraft Carriers in World War II
specifically ADM 1/7052.