Most valuable Carrier Fighter Of WWII

I would like to post an unusual thread on what constituted the most valuable fighter of the war. By that I mean the fighter that influenced the broader outcomes of the war, or could have affected the outcomes of the war



I think it will be universally agreed that the best carrier fighter will come down to two choices, the F6F, and F4U. These two fighters are deserving of that mantle, but did they contribute as much to the outcome of the war as those types that were manning the gunlines from earlier in the war? The A6M and the F4F for example. The f4f sustained the USN in its darkest hours in 1942, the A6M made possible an amazing string of victories for Japan that profoundly altered the world order after the war. My point is that these "hot" designs arrived in the latter parts of WWII. Were they essential to securing victory or avoiding defeat?



For some aircraft they were never going to win the war outright in their own right. But they may have significantly affected the course of the war. Case in point are the European Axis planes like the Bf109. Other types like the A6M were always bound for defeat, because of the circumstances in which they were fighting. Some may feel that these types were still important….their performance so outstanding and so unexpected as to materially lengthen or affect the way the war was fought.



Some may consider some types as not materially important in themselves, but leading to later developments because of some aspect of that earlier design. You might put the French D-376 or Grumman F3F in that category. In the case of the French fighter, it was its relative failure that provided some of the impetus for the design and development of the American F4F.



Some designs started out pretty badly and developed quite well and unexpectedly. The transition from Seafire II to Seafire XV would fit into this category



The Fulmar, so often derided was at least available in 1940 when Britiain was in dire need of a reliable carrier based fight.



I am going to run a poll where people select the carrier fighter most valuable to the course of the war. Just to make it a bit interesting, I will add some fighters from those nations like Italy Germany and france that were either projected, or which were never provided a carrier on which to fly.



So the choices are as follows



Sea Gladiator

Dewoitine D376

Grumman F3F

Fairey Fulmar

Mitsuibishi A5M

Fairey Fulmar

Bf109T

Re2000

Re2001

Grumman F4F

Hawker Sea Hurricane

Mitsubishi A6M

Supermarine Seafire

Fairey Firefly

Grumman F6F

Vought F4U corsair

Well, there is certainly some low hanging fruit in there.

For the French, Italians and Germans the chances of any aircraft changing the outcome of the war, or changing the course of the war (shortening or lengthening it by several months?) or affecting the operations of their enemies to any large degree are about nil.
1 to 2 dozen aircraft (about all the prospective flight decks would hold) just don't have that much influence, except in a hollywood movie


For the US, as far as development/design goes for the early planes, monoplane fighters were coming, it was just a matter of When. Being the first Naval air service to use monoplane torpedo bombers and the first to use monoplane dive bombers (even if the Northrop BT-1 wasn't very good) monoplane fighters could not have been that far behind. I am not seeing any influence of the Dewoitine D376 on the F4F??

For the British the list goes to three real quick (or 2 1/2)
Fairey Fulmar
Hawker Sea Hurricane (1/2?)
Supermarine Seafire

The Fulmar for it's use in getting the Malta convoys through. Effects of the convoys being much more important than the numbers of aircraft shot down.
I could be wrong on the Sea Hurricane, not well read on it's exploits but while it did provide good service in shooting down (or chasing away) Fw 200 and flying boat snoopers did it really participate in any other important naval actions? Just asking.
The Seafire did most of the heavy work for the RN that was not done by lendlease fighters.

The Gladiator really didn't do much, and the Firefly arrived a bit to late to make a significant difference to the war.

I am not saying that the crews didn't fly on dangerous missions or had an easy time of it. But what did the Firefly do that could not have been done by other aircraft (lend lease Hellcats?) that impacted the course of the war?

The reason I included the French, German and Italian wasn't from the perspective of achieving war changing outcomes. For the germans, for example, it has been argued that the presence of even a few carrier based a/c early in the war may have produced an upset. I don't buy it myself, but I needed people to have the chance to express that opinion, and provide some sort of support for it.

The French I thought was a novel reason. The D-376 was really a failure, but from that failure grew at least some of the impetus to build the American F4F, which the French referred to as the G-36 I think. And the f4f was a very significant aircraft, but needing a lot of work (which it can be argued was provided by the French really) in its early days.

I am not sure about the French connection to the F4F. Things seem to be a bit murky.
Grumman gets a contract for the XF4F-1 Biplane on March 3 1936.
July 10th 1936 sees the Navy approve a change to the monoplane configuration and change of designation to XF4F-2. at this time the engine is a 900hp (at altitude) P & W R-1830 with a single speed/single stage supercharger.

Sept 2 1937 sees the first flight of the XF4F-2 which by March of 1938 looks like this.


Grumman looses the contract to Brewster, in part, according to one story, because the Grumman fuselage is just enough fatter to make crating a shipping by rail a problem???

In Oct of 1938 Grumman gets a contract for a modified version, the XF4F-3 with new wing, engine (two stage supercharger) and tail.

After many trials and tribulations Grumman gets a contract for 54 F4F-3s on Aug 8th 1939.

France orders 100 exort versions using commercial Wright R-1820 engines. This is the first mention of the French. They may very well have been looking around and talking to Grumman months before.

Things get a bit confusing as the first production F4F-3 makes it's first flight in Feb 1940. April sees the 3rd and 4th F4Fs ordered to be equipped with Wright R-1820 engines and called XF4F-5s. May 11th sees the first flight test of a French F4F with Cyclone engine. The AMerican XF4F-5s first fly in June and in July are sent to Anacostia for test work on superchargers. July also sees the 2nd production F4F-3 make its first flight. July 27th 1940 sees the British take over the French order. Oct 1940 sees the first test flight of a British Martlet II (ordered when? ) with single stage two speed R-1830. By the end of Oct 81 Martlets (of both types?) have been delivered to the Royal Navy. By the beginning of Dec Grumman has delivered 22 F4Fs to the US Navy out of 578 on order. By Dec 31 1940 Grumman has delivered 103 aircraft and one has shot down a JU-88 near Scapa flow (or claimed one).
Now like production of the Buffalo and the P-40 I have no idea how much the US Navy allowed The French and British orders to take precedence over their own.
I have no idea if the French really influenced the design of the F4F to any extent or just bought what was offered. Or asked for an extra gun bay so the plane would hold six 7.5 mm machine guns? just speculating.

Would have been interesting to see how the A7M played out had it not been side-lined for increased A6M and G4M production.

In regards to the Bf109T, had the Germans actually committed themselves to their Carriers, it may have been a thorn in Britain's side, as now Germany would be able to project themselves further than their traditional range in attacks on the UK or conducting attacks on convoys - for example, the Graf Zeppelin accompanied by a taskforce comprised of a Pocket Battleship, several cruisers and a destroyer screen would have created quite a bit of trouble.

My poll choice goes to the F4F - it held the line against Japan and after being replaced in the PTO, continued on to war's end in the Atlantic, protecting convoys.

Excellent topic for a survey. My knee jerk reaction is to pick the F6F (as practically everyone would expect) but I want to really study the other planes listed and learn something about their service history before casting my vote.

A LOT of great candidates here by the way.....

I have to go with the A6M Mitsubishi and the F4F Grumman. The A6M in my mind is an obvious choice as being a game changer at the beginning of conflict. True.....it became less "effective" as newer US designs came online in 1943, as well as suffering due to reduced numbers and losing skilled pilots. But as far as being one of the most valuable....it has to be there.

So why the Wildcat? In no way am I saying the Wildcat is a better platform than the Hellcat, or Corsair. But, in my opinion, by the time those aircraft replaced the F4F, the course of the Pacific conflict was pretty well determined, although there remained 2 more bloody years. While the Wildcat couldn't match the Zero in many performance areas, by depending on it's robust construction and coming up with newer tactics (Thach Weave, etc.), the Marine and Navy pilots for example at Guadalcanal, "gave as good as they got". Without the Wildcats at Henderson Field, as well as supporting carriers, it is doubtful that the US would have retained control of Guadalcanal. And if so, how would things have changed?

I admit that while this might not be in the majority view, I'm going with the 2 main adversaries at the beginning of the Pacific war. Again, my opinion and I would welcome any additional thoughts.

GrauGeist said:

In regards to the Bf109T, had the Germans actually committed themselves to their Carriers, it may have been a thorn in Britain's side, as now Germany would be able to project themselves further than their traditional range in attacks on the UK or conducting attacks on convoys - for example, the Graf Zeppelin accompanied by a taskforce comprised of a Pocket Battleship, several cruisers and a destroyer screen would have created quite a bit of trouble.

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Or handed the British a propaganda/morale boosting victory. capacity was 40-42 planes. Which isn't quite enough. You either have a decent but not great strike group and a poor escort/CAP group or a poor strike group and a decent but not great escort/CAP group.
You need a minimum of 4 planes in the air at a time for a CAP. So a pair of planes can investigate any radar contact and leave the 2nd pair to investigate a 2nd contact. Now how many planes do you need to maintain 4 planes in the air in all daylight hours? 8, 10 or 12? Now how many fighters do you want to escort the strike group? 4 or eight or????
And what are the Germans using for recon planes?
The 109T
Ju-87R (or equivalent?)

What do you figure the chances of a JU-87 Recon plane against a Fairey Fulmar? or two?

If the British know the Germans have a working carrier they operate theirs in pairs, less flexibility operationally but much greater strike power.

The Graf Zeppelin was slated to have the Fi167 in a dual role: torpedo bomber and recon. In recon role, the Fi167 had a range of 930 miles with a drop-tank fitted.

However, consider this: the Graf Zeppelin (or Peter Strasser) would certainly have CAP in place, but for recon, I'd imagine that an accompanying Battleship or Cruiser would utilize one (or more) of their Ar196 compliment.

But in my earlier comment, I was thinking that a co-ordinated attack from the mainland and by sea (with the proposed task force) would have caused quite a bit of trouble.

"Value" implies that the aircraft was present, which immediately eliminates all German and Italian carrier aircraft as neither navy got carriers to sea.

Only the US, Japan, UK, and France had carriers, and France got little value out of theirs. I think the F4F wins this contest

Parsifal introduced the German aspect in his post, therefore, it is part of the discussion.

And if we get right down to it, he forgot to add the Japanese army types that flew from Imperial Japanese Army carriers.

My take on determining value is firstly to look at the contributions each aircraft made, or potentially could have made and proportionate to the effort put into them determine what impact that aircraft had.
(militarily) were in Europe and North Africa whilst the most significant in terms of post war power and effect were in the pacific. . If the European Axis managed to break out of the containment ring thrown around them it was possible that a complete upset could be inflicted on the allies. The same logic cannot be applied to the Japanese. They were essentially a regional power, but their logistics were so limited that they were never going to extend much further than they actually did. moreover, the battles at sea that decided the fate of the war, in both the PTO and ETO were fought 1940-1943.

So, by process of elimination , I would discount both the F6F and F4U, whilst still acknowledging their very significant technical and material achievements.

I would discount also the Seafire . It was introduced in 1942, but was a failure until much later in the war, because of its high attrition. I would acknowledge the Sea Hurricane. It made quite an impact on battles 1941-2 but not enough to claim the mantle of 'most valuable". So too the Fulmar and firefly.

From a philosophical standpoint of sheer technical advancement I think F3F is up there as well as the Japanese A5M . The claude was probably as much an advance over the A4N as the A6M was over the A5M. The A6M was of greater value to the Japanese because of the shock value it generated.

Great as the valueof the A6M was in terms of planting this stamp of power and innovation to a nation outside the European clique, it was still contained and defeated by the F4F. The Grumman had a hand in both the PTO and ETO. It was a design available relatively early until almost the end. My vote went to the f4F as a result

(Edit): unlike other types, seemingly more advanced, the F4F was quite useful aboard cramped carriers like the RN carriers and CVEs. Larger types could and did operate from these smaller platforms, but for the CVEs in particular, they were not easy to operate from. And at the end there were more than 100 CVEs built, or on order.
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I don't agree with the usual arguments about German carrier a/c effects, but that is not to say they are not valid.

Ive mistakenly entered the Fulmar twice in the poll and don't know how to delete one of them.

A/c being transported on carriers, but not actually carrier aircraft I didn't think worth including.

GrauGeist said:

Would have been interesting to see how the A7M played out had it not been side-lined for increased A6M and G4M production.

In regards to the Bf109T, had the Germans actually committed themselves to their Carriers, it may have been a thorn in Britain's side, as now Germany would be able to project themselves further than their traditional range in attacks on the UK or conducting attacks on convoys - for example, the Graf Zeppelin accompanied by a taskforce comprised of a Pocket Battleship, several cruisers and a destroyer screen would have created quite a bit of trouble.

My poll choice goes to the F4F - it held the line against Japan and after being replaced in the PTO, continued on to war's end in the Atlantic, protecting convoys.

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Was the F4F entirely replaced in the Pacific? I had the impression it continued to serve in limited numbers in the Pacific aboard escort carriers till the end of the war.

michael rauls said:

Was the F4F entirely replaced in the Pacific? I had the impression it continued to serve in limited numbers in the Pacific aboard escort carriers till the end of the war.

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It also served in the Atlantic and Mediterranean.

The carrier Graf Spee is no more relevant than the Aquila, and for the same reason: for it to be useful, it would have had to be completed and equipped no later than 1938 to be militarily useful in 1940, because the procedures for carrier aviation to work would need to be developed. The British may have noticed the German Navy swanning around with a carrier.

As much as I like the often under appreciated F4F my vote is for the F6F.
In my opinion it was to the Pacific theater what the p51 was to the European one. Most notably a sudden and dramatic increase in kill/loss ratios. Not to mention docile handling caracteristics(so I have read anyway), dependability, and realative ease of maintenance.

michael rauls said:

Was the F4F entirely replaced in the Pacific? I had the impression it continued to serve in limited numbers in the Pacific aboard escort carriers till the end of the war.

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The F4F/FM was scaled back considerably in the PTO, but was of exceptional value in the Atlantic. But yes, they did continue to serve aboard escort carriers in the PTO, and during the battle of Samar (25 October 1944), proved they were still a serious force to be reckoned with when they defended the Taffy task forces from IJA surface elements.

parsifal said:

A/c being transported on carriers, but not actually carrier aircraft I didn't think worth including.

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The IJA carriers did transport aircraft, but they also operated the Kayaba Ka-1 for ASW duties. In the case of the IJA's Akitsu Maru, it was the world's first Amphibious Assault ship, so it did have an impact - especially in the sense of bringing land-based aircraft into a theater dominated by Naval aircraft.

So the short story is, the Imperial Japanese Army's carriers provided more function than the carriers of the Italians or the French

swampyankee said:

It also served in the Atlantic and Mediterranean.

The carrier Graf Spee is no more relevant than the Aquila, and for the same reason: for it to be useful, it would have had to be completed and equipped no later than 1938 to be militarily useful in 1940, because the procedures for carrier aviation to work would need to be developed. The British may have noticed the German Navy swanning around with a carrier.

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Yes didn't the F4f serve in the Atlantic pretty much till the end. I think I recall reading about a clash between Martlets and Bf109s off Norway in Very late 44 or early 45?

GrauGeist said:

The F4F/FM was scaled back considerably in the PTO, but was of exceptional value in the Atlantic. But yes, they did continue to serve aboard escort carriers in the PTO, and during the battle of Samar (25 October 1944), proved they were still a serious force to be reckoned with when they defended the Taffy task forces from IJA surface elements.


The IJA carriers did transport aircraft, but they also operated the Kayaba Ka-1 for ASW duties. In the case of the IJA's Akitsu Maru, it was the world's first Amphibious Assault ship, so it did have an impact - especially in the sense of bringing land-based aircraft into a theater dominated by Naval aircraft.

So the short story is, the Imperial Japanese Army's carriers provided more function than the carriers of the Italians or the French

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Yes I've always found it fascinating how F4fs seemed to be able to hold their own and in some cases even come out on top when pitted against later types that on paper at least doesn't look like they had any business being in the same sky with. The Bf109g for example.

michael rauls said:

Yes didn't the F4f serve in the Atlantic pretty much till the end. I think I recall reading about a clash between Martlets and Bf109s off Norway in Very late 44 or early 45?

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The F4F was manufactured until 1943, the FM was manufactured right up to the end of the war. They (primarily the FM) served in the Atlantic until the last day of the war.

michael rauls said:

Yes I've always found it fascinating how F4fs seemed to be able to hold their own and in some cases even come out on top when pitted against later types that on paper at least doesn't look like they had any business being in the same sky with. The Bf109g for example.

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The interesting thing about the F4F, was that it's design was nearly as old as the Bf109.