P-47 carrier capable?

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73 FS after landing in Siapan July 1944. Aircraft in the background belonged to Lt Cormier.
 

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Unless my eyes deceive me, those P47's were catapulted off the deck which says something about how strong the P47 was.
I have never seen or heard of a catapult being attached like that.
 
That was how tail draggers were catapulted. Search for Korean War pic of Corsairs being catapulted. They're done the same way.

Lets not forget the Mustang that the Navy tested for carrier ops. It was fitted with arrestor hook and the like.
 
kool kitty89 said:
How and where did the P-47's flying CAP land?
Click to expand...

Hi folks,

I'm way late to this particular party, but may have some information to add. My uncle was pilot of Sonny Boy, Eubanks Barnhill. This isn't particularly about the CAP, but does regard where those razorbacks landed:

'banks told me a little about Saipan. He told me that when he launched, they strip was already taken, but the battle was still going on. His and some other crew chiefs and support crew had embarked on landing craft to meet the planes when they came in.

When Sonny Boy landed, my uncle was met by his crew chief running to meet him with a steel pot helmet. They were still taking sniper fire.

Less than an hour later, he was in the air again flying ground support.

Thanks for sharing the images here. As with so many of the greatest generation, these were ordinary men, but they rose to the occasion and became heroes.

Cheers,

AG
 
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That was great.

I watched one of those movie previews on that site and they had a picture of a P-47 that flew through a tree and made it back. Unbelievable damage. Another pilot explained that as he taxied after landing, people were pointing at the side of his plane. He said here was oil all over the side of his aircraft and a one foot sized hole in the side of the engine that knocked out two pistons.
 
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I'm in the middle of reading Little Giants: US Escort Carriers Against Japan by Y'Blood and I came across the P-47's being catapulted from the CVE's.

I am amazed and impressed.
 
I recall a quote somewhere to the effect that, "if they built a runway all around the world, Republic would build an airplane that would use it all!"
 
The Photos are interesting but in no way prove that a P-47 was carrier capable.

1, what was the take-off weight?
a, Ferrying aircraft to an Island/shore base is one thing ( what was the ammo load? full ammo, part ammo, no ammo? even at 267 rpg a P-47 carried around 640lbs of ammo.)
b, what was the fuel load? The planes are fitted with drop tanks but are they full or just going ashore with the plane?
c, They can pick favorable times (weather/wind) for take-off.

2, Just because you can get it into the air doesn't mean you can land it
a, at 10,600lbs a P-47 was supposed to have a "best IAS approach" of 115mph. Now stall speed may well be a bit under that but even a TBF with torpedo was supposed to land in the 70mph range. Even if you can get the P-47 to actually touch down at 100mph the extra speed means about twice the force per pound of aircraft weight on the arrestor system.
b, The P-47 may have been rugged but carrier aircraft often landed with around 40-50% higher vertical impact speeds than land planes.
c,the above are numbers, the next thing you need is low speed control. What was the P-47s rudder control and aileron control near stall for making those last second corrections before hitting the deck. One of the things that kept the Corsair off of carrier decks for quite a while even though in landed in the low 70mph range.
 
I do not believe they were carrier capable as the book I'm reading commented several times that once the pilots were launched they could not return to the carrier. They were carrying ammo and must have had a decent amount of fuel as they were flying CAP for the CVEs as well as attacking targets on land.
 
The P-47s were simply ferried to their destination. You'll find that several land types were transported like this, such as P-40s to North Africa and so on. In some cases, the aircraft were launched and others, they were gantried from the decks.

Just because one sees land-based aircraft on the decks of carrier, doesn't mean they were carrier-capable.

If this were the case, then the Fw190, Bf109, Do335 and Me262 (to name a few of the types transported to America) would qualify, since they were on a carrier...
 
Weight should not be in issue, The F7F Tigercat was designed as a carrier aircraft, and it weighed much more than the p-47. Now, maybe you would need to use a newer style Midway carrier to handle the weight, but if theP-47 was strong enough to handle the landings, it should not have been a problem in regards to weight. The Tigercat was designed a carrier borne fighter.
According to Military Factory the empty weight of the two aircraft are as follows
P-47 Thunderbolt 9.949 lbs.
F7F Tigercat 16,270 LBS.
 
I would have thought that most single engine fighters could be made carrier compatible given suitable modifications. The question would be would they be good enough to be effective carrier fighters. Landing speed would probably be a major factor. The P51 had on paper a lot of the right factors, range, speed, performance but I understand that its landing speed made it too marginal for carrier operations. A similar issue might also be applicable to the P47, I don't pretend to know the facts on this aspect of her performance.

But Spits, Hurricanes and Me109's were modified. The Seafire was probably just about good enough as a carrier fighters, not even it greatest fans would claim that it was good. The Hurricane lacked performance and probably range and I see no reason why the 109 would be any better than the Seafire.
 
U.S. Navy also needed the aircraft to have such features such as tail-hook, folding wings and to have a period of floatation if ditched at sea.

Also, the P-47D weighed 10,000 lbs. empty (max. load 17,500 lbs.), the F6F weighed a little less at 9,238 lbs. empty and 15,415 lbs. max. and the Corsair weighed even less than the Hellcat (empty and max.) Also look at the comparable ranges (without drop-tanks), the P-47 was roughly 800 miles, the Hellcat was about 945 the Corsair was 1,015 miles.

In order to get the P-47 to land on a carrier, you would have to come up with a solution to shorten it's landing distance, strengthen it's tail to handle it's mass during violent deceleration and redesign the wings to fold yet still handle the max. loadout the P-47 was capable of handling.
 

Great, Midway class carriers went into operation when? Fall/winter of 1945? Now the Essex class carriers did operate much heavier aircraft post war but that was after the catapults were upgraded, the arresting systems were upgraded and maybe the decks were reinforced/rebuilt? By that time the Navy had Bearcats, F4U-5s and jets. Not much need for P-47s.

BTW, Stall speed for a F7F-3n at 21,746lbs was 90.9mph with 375 gallons fuel and 86mph with the fuel burned off.
 
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The main thing for carrier aircraft is getting them back on board. The Navy had enough accidents with the planes they were using, even 2-3 crashes per 1000 landings (0.2-0.3%) can deplete your air-group in several weeks worth of operations even without enemy contact. How many planes need to launched and recovered every single day that flight operations are possible? A CAP does little good if it is sitting on the deck. You have to launch the replacement CAP before you land the current CAP. The only way to find the enemy ships is with search planes, if your radar finds the enemy ships before your planes you are in DEEP SH**. so you need search planes in the air 2-3 times a day. You can have 2-3 dozen take-offs and landings per day even without training flights.
 

I agree with all of this but it was achievable, the weight would have increased. All these changes were done to the Seafire, so it would probably have been possible. However the performance would have suffered and the USN didn't need it, but it probably could have been done.
 
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