Most Overrated aircraft of WWII.....?

The most over-rated aircraft of WW2

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As an aside, Brewster's headquarters was about 30 miles from Bethpage. Both Bethpage and Long Island City were on a heavily used passenger rail line.

Poaching employees is a time-honored method of getting staff, and Brewster's HQ was not off in some far-off wilderness, but a highly industrialized area.
 
Some people believe J7W to be maneuverable, even tho it's clearly an impossible case for the plane. The said vehicle has 240kg/m2 wing loading with only 20.5m2 wingsurface area available, canard itself isn't a bad thing tho. It's just too heavy for the overall profile, and the weight is coming from the decently complex air-cooling system. Empty weight of 3600kg with 5000kg TOW(the added weight is mostly the cooling water) is simply ridiculous for a combatant aircraft. I mean, J7W is a tandem plane(main lift set aft of the CoG) with very small fore-wings.
The canards are overly-loaded to accommodate with the possible wing-first stall, as long as the canards are stalling first it's easier to recover from the nose-up state. So the canards are restricted to the limitation dependents of the rear wing's capability. In this case, high wing-loading with low-aspect ratio wing combination is just... just bad. Can they even perform a stable barrel-roll? It's another question. Only if they can put a wider, yet bigger canards for the plane, it might be a different story but, this isn't a case.
Nevertheless, there is no any other look-alike so. The fans got the idea of [canard aircrafts being maneuverable]
...is just the jet-era stereotype. It's meant to be a high-altitude interceptor so I really don't see the points in the low-aspect ratio wings, shouldn't they use a wider wing profile much like Ta152 or other reconnaissance military aircrafts(with that wing configuration, the exceptional energy retention is way worse).
I mean. the reduced drag from the frontal-area won't make-up for it really. Only thing good about it is just the reduced stall-limit combined with better climb-rate for the same amount of thrust. Aghhh, J7W is over-rated, It's no match for 1600hp Xp-55(Planned).
 
The Buffalo was a decent-performing, fast-climbing, agile aircraft for its day at its inception. The problem was, it didn't take well at all to weight increases. The last version, the F2A-3, was modified to be a long-ranged recon fighter, with 240 gallons of internal fuel. (The F4U only had 237). They didn't engineer the rest of the systems to handle the added weight. Landing gear buckled and climb rate was anemic.
 




This is one of the WW II Myths.
Since the fuel tanks in the spars of the F2A could not be effectively fitted with US type self sealing material the -3 version was fitted with tanks that were self sealing totaling 80 gallons capacity. One of the two existing spar tanks was kept in use because it already had both the main and reserve fuel taps and because the overflow/return line was plumbed to it. The other tank was not used or used only on rare occasions at the squadron commanders (or higher?) express orders. The tank filler was so labeled.

Some books or documents differ.

this one; http://www.alternatewars.com/SAC/F2A-3_Buffalo_PD_-_1_D

shows the 240 gallons for ferry use but guns and ammo are not carried and armor and purging system are noted as being removed for ferrying.

Trying to use a plane as along range recon fighter when only 1/3 of the fuel is in protected doesn't seem like a good idea. Or rather a good idea if the goal is to loose fighters.

BTW the early F4U-1s held 361 gallons internal between the unprotected wing tanks and the 237 gallon protected fuselage tank. The wing tanks fell from use and the plumbing deleted when the drop tanks came into use.
 
I would note that the SBD-3 (Scout Bomber Douglas 3rd version) held 260 gallons in protected tanks for scout missions. With unprotected tanks it could hold 310 gallons.

The need for a long range "scout" Buffalo seems a bit lacking.

There was a long range Grumman photo recon plane. The F4F-7 of which 21 were built, all guns and armor taken out. the wing did not fold and it was sealed to become one huge gas tank. About 555 gallons in the wing combined with the fuselage tanks for about 700 gallons total.
 
Akuma said:
while other posters said "Don't Dogfight The Zero!" I guess fear can be referred to as a form of respect.
Click to expand...

It's worth noting that Allied pilots were being told this until the very end of the war even though they had superior aircraft. The Zero could still bite in the hands of a good pilot, even in 1945.


Aside from Mark's (Buffnut's) assertion about the Buffalos, the RAAF only ever had one Hawker Hurricane and its P-51s, CAC Mustangs didn't enter service until the very end of the war, seeing their first service use as part of the Japan occupation forces. Despite the use of Spitfires (Capstans), the P-40 was the RAAF's primary fighter of WW2.

GrauGeist said:
One was known to have downed an A6M (which was actually a mis-identified KI-43).
Click to expand...

Actually, it was the other way round, dude; he shot down an Oscar and claimed it was a Zero. It was reported to unit HQ as "Archer has shot down a Zeke, repeat a Zeke. Send six bottles of beer"! This is the aircraft, on display in the Australian War Memorial.

DSC_5442
 
The fanny thing is that of the all fighters which Finland purchased during the WW2 from Western democracies other than UK Brewster B-239s were the only ones which performance figures were as promised. Also Curtiss Hawk 75As we bought from war-booty storages of Germany did not achieve performance promised in Curtiss' brochures. On the other hand B-239 still had some teething troubles left, so it was lucky that Finns had over a year's time to correct those before the great test of the plane came.
 
I always wondered about that. They got 13 brand new, out of the crate H-75A-6s from Norway, coupled to a Swedish licensed R-1830 rated at 1065 bhp., fitted with four French? 7.5mm FN Brownings. Did they add armor and protected fuel tanks? Why was the performance so bad? Maybe they weren't so new by the time they got them from Germany. But you would think the engines would be new. The Finns weren't slouches when it came to aircraft maintenance. And how did they manage to still rack up the second best score of the non-Messerschmitt types?
 
Does anyone have any idea why the F2A-3 was regarded as such an overweight pig compared to the F2A-2? Going by the copy of America's Hundred Thousand I have out from the library, empty weight grew about 22% between the F2A-1 and F2A-2, but only about 3% between the F2A-2 and F2A-3. Weights in fuel and equipment are nearly identical except that there are a mix of two and four gun loads for the -2 while all the -3 model loads all use four guns.
 
Hello
A-6s probably had 7.9 mm Brownings originally, I have not time to check what mgs were initially installed here, maybe Finns standardized the 7.5 mm Brownings initially. Cyclones had at least initially tendency to overheat and already in early August 1941 it was decided to equip all Hawks with Twin Wasps because there were no extra Cyclones available and give all Cyclones to LLv 24 (it was equipped with Brewster B-239s). But Cyclone engined CUc-506 clocked 418 km/h at SL and 476 km/h at 3,500 m, not far off the result at the A&AEE in April 1941 with a Hawk-75A-4, 302 mph at 12900 ft. CUw-572 414 km/h at SL, 436.5 km/h at 2285 m, 433.5 km/h at 3570 m. Pilot's back armour and self-sealing fuel tanks.
 
The flight test data publicized listed 7.5mms, therefore I assumed that the Germans provided all war booty H-75s with 7.5mm FNs. That's why I was surprised by the low performance numbers of the tested aircraft. the -6s had four guns like the -1s, whereas the -2s, -3s and -4s had six guns. According to Stenmann, the Finns preferred the better handling of the four gun models. An H-75A-6 was the highest scoring Hawk of the LLV 32.
 
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