P-47 carrier capable?

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There is at least one major difference between a Spitfire and a P-47. The Spitfire landed at about the right speed to begin with. Not 30-50% faster than the 'normal' carrier planes.
 
Interesting that the Skyraider which was designed to operate from WW2 era carriers had a design wing loading of 45 lbs per foot compared to the P-47s 44.3. From what I've read it also had a maximum arrested landing weight of 17,000 pounds, although the landing speed, as expected, was quite a bit lower. The max take off weight was just over 21,000 pounds. Heavier in all respects than a P-47.
I guess my point is that weight would probably not be so much of a factor as airframe strength and stall speed.
 
Many of the WW II Carriers were upgraded after the war, new arrestor systems, new catapults, new elevators, rebuilt flight decks.

SCB-27 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Also please note that the Skyraider had about 33% more wing than a P-47, a different air foil and different flaps. It also went through several different engine versions.

Question is while some version/s of the Skyraider may make arrested landings at 17,000lbs it may vary with which version and which ship?
 
The P-47 was not carrier capable and would never be so. The airframe was not designed for carrier landings. The thing was heay enough as it was without trying to add the strength for carrier operations, and the wing was optimized for higher altitude operations, not for good manners around the carrier at low speeds. The landing gear would not take it, the airframe would not take it, the visibility was awful (about like a Corsair, and one of those was enough), and the wings were never designed to be able to fold.

The amount of weight that can be handled by an arrester system is almost completely dependent on the piston system. The Midway calss carriers had an enormous piston system capable of landing an A-3 Skywarrior, so they would easily have been able to handle a P-47, but the airframe of the P-47 would have broken in half during an arrested landing on a WWII carrier with WWII arrester systems.

As stated above, many planes were capable of taking off from a carrier pointing into the wind at about 30 knots or so. Jimmy Dolittle launched B-25's from a carrier to bomb Tokyo. I hope there is nobody in here who thinks he could have landed back aboard with the B-25's! Now there HAVE been carrier suitability trials of the C-130 and you can find YouTube videos of it. But they weren't WWII size carriers. And it did not use the arrester gear ... it used reverse thrust.

The main criteria for carrier suitability is to have the airframe strength to handle it combined with slow-flight manners suitable for carrier operations. Along the way it is nice to fold up the wings, but the main thing is have a strong enough airframe to handle the stresses. Without deliberate design for that, you won't have it in any aircraft. There is absolutely no reason to design in that strength unless you have carrier operations in mind.
 
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GregP said:
[...] but the airframe of the P-47 would have broken in half during an arrested landing on a WWII carrier with WWII arrester systems.
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Funny, I was reading down to this, thinking, "I wonder if anyone ever landed a P-47 on a carrier." I guess not, huh?
 
Interestingly I was reading Air Arsenal North America: Purchases Lend-lease, Aircraft for the Allies 1938-1945 by Phil Butler and in the book showed a picture of one of the first P-39s shipped to England. They added a tail hook and another gadget that I cannot recall and landed it onto a carrier. I know repeated landings is one thing on an air frame, but I would think landing a P-47 a few times would be possible.
 
Keep in mind that a Jug needed considerable real estate to land, so even if you reinforced the P-47's aft superstructure and added a tailhook, it's weight and speed would rip the sh!t out of the shipboard arrestor equipment during a landing
 
For an aircraft to be truly "carrier capable" it has to be able to operate from the carrier for a large number of take-off and landing cycles. Otherwise you are either carting around special purpose aircraft that suck up hanger/deck space and are useless for the majority of flights the carrier does handle OR you have a high speed fighter replenishment ship accompanying the carrier to feed in new aircraft as operational accidents take out the original complement of aircraft.

Even a pair of carriers operating together are going to need 12-16 fighter flights every other "flying weather day" to put a minimum CAP of 4 aircraft over the taskforce during daylight hours ( it may be 16-24 flights a day ?) with carriers alternating CAP duty. You also need searches to find/warn of the enemy fleet so again you need a number of flights per day by the 'strike' aircraft operating in the 'search' mode. Having 12-16 aircraft on board that are not to be flown until the enemy fleet is actually found (or island target is reached) really impacts the ability of the carriers to perform fleet protection in the one to two weeks before the strike is made and one the way back to base.
 
I'm not saying the P-47 could ever be made carrier capable , but we seem to be forgetting the Navy was already operating aircraft from carriers heavier than a P-47, both the TBF and SB2C were heavier, and even the Hellcat was close to the P-47's weight, less than a thousand pounds difference.

The P-47 did land faster. But wasn't the arresting gear adjustable ?

Surely a 6000 lb Wildcat didn't get arrested with the same settings as the 12,000 lb Avenger ?
 
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There is an upper limit to the adjustment, and the arresting gear has to handle the kinetic energy. formula for kinetic energy is weight( or mass) X the velocity squared with a few constants. 10% increase in speed is a 21% increase in energy and a 20% increase in speed is a 44% increase in energy. 30% increase in speed is 69% increase in energy.

The Essex class carriers were rebuilt during the late 40s/early 50s to handle the heavier faster jets and the rebuilding took over 2 years on average. Granted the rebuild allowed them to operate MUCH larger aircraft than the P-47 but the P-47 was going to present a bunch of problems without offering a whole lot in the way of return.
What was a P-47C really going to offer the Navy over a F6F-3? What was a P-47D-25 offer over an F4U-4 or F6F-5?

If the Japanese had miraculously come up with a 425mph fighter at 30,000 ft in the summer of 1944 in numbers then maybe the Navy might have gone for a carrier P-47. Since the Navy fighters could handle pretty much anything the Japanese had there was no pressing need to adapt ill suited aircraft to the Navy environment.
 
What was the P-47s minimum landing speed and how far above the power on stall was it? On the Seafire the margin was very small and pilots tended to add a few knots 'for the wife and kids' resulting in fast landings that damaged or destroyed the aircraft.

What was it's rate of descent in that condition? Again the Seafire's was several ft/sec higher than the US aircraft designed for carrier operations.

Carrier aircraft were designed with a margin above the stall and a lower rate of descent than land based aircraft. These you can't easily change. Other aerodynamic factors which might be disastrous in carrier operations but benign when operating from airfields are also difficult to overcome. You don't want an aircraft with a tendency to float over the deck for example. You do want an aircraft with neutral handling and balance on which authority of all the controls exists in a landing condition.

They also had things that you could theoretically fix to a land based aircraft like different undercarriage (the P-47s has a limited 'stroke', but then you don't want a big 'bounce' either) and strengthening for arrestor hooks etc.

The question is much more complicated than it might seem.

Cheers

Steve
 
The P-47 airframe was never stressed for carrier operations. It would not make even ONE carrier landing ... maybe on a Midway class carrier, but not on a WWII carrier.
 
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I love the Jug but.... The aircraft carrier and the arresting gear on the ship is the least of any concern. In fact, I would bet they could have been made to accept the speed / weight of the P-47.

As tough as the P-47 was, it was just not designed as a carrier plane period and don't think any adaptation would have made it any better than something that already existed in the F6F or the F4U.

The Thunderbolt was already very heavy. How much heavier is it going to be with wing-fold gear, tail hook gear, the added weight stronger landing gear brings, etc? Now you have either a higher landing speed, or increasing wing area even more, which now slows its top speed.
 
GregP said:
The P-47 airframe was never stressed for carrier operations. It would not make even ONE carrier landing ... maybe on a Midway class carrier, but not on a WWII carrier.
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But that's not because it landed faster. That was my point. When these aircraft got the cut, they dropped in, they didn't land in, as on a land base. Thus, it wasn't that they'd come in too "hot." The fact is, landing on a carrier deck, they wouldn't be coming in any "hotter" than any other aircraft of comparable size and weight.
 
The P-47 WAS NOT capable of a carrier landing guys. It has NOTHING to do with the size or speed of the P-47. The AIRFAME could not take the stress to come to a stop on a carrier, nor was it designed to "drop in."

Jeez, go read some design stuff on naval aircraft ... the P-47 was NOT one of them. The notion is just not embedded in reality.
 

Uh. The F6F, F4U, Avenger and so on were doing about 70mph when they got the order to "cut". The P-47 would be doing 90 minimum ( or more?) or else it would have nosed up and dropped like a rock even with power on (stalled).

Wing area and wing loading are indicators of performance, they are by no means a guarantee. Different air foils and different flaps can have rather different lift/stall characteristics even for roughly the same size wing and at near the same wing loadings.

P-47 'approach' speed was around 120 mph just before coming over the fence. about the same as a B-25 at 31,000lbs and around 30+mph faster than a P-40.

Look it up.
 
If it's capable of being "looked up," why don't you "look it up" for me, and show it to me? That way, I don't have to just accept your conclusory statements, in the light of what I know, that being, no LSO is going to let any aircraft drop in "hot." He's going to wave it off, signaling to the pilot, "Get your attitude and air speed right, and come back around and try it, again." You're maintaining it's aerodynamically impossible for a P-47 pilot to configure that approach in that aircraft at the proper attitude and air speed to drop down on a carrier deck. I'm not saying you're incorrect. Let me say that, again, just in case you didn't hear it. I'm not saying you're incorrect. I'm saying, show me. I'm saying, that's a rather incredulous conclusion. They come in "nose up," and "drop like a rock," all the time, that's what it's about. You're envisioning they're landing on a land strip, coming in "over the fence," and you're imposing those constraints to conclude they can't drop down on a carrier deck? I'm sorry, I'm now buying it. Show me where that's impossible. Show me where it says all your facts and figures add up to the one inescapable conclusion it's aerodynamically impossible to set that aircraft to drop down at the proper attitude and air speed on a carrier deck. You're the one with the burden of persuasion, here, persuade me. To this point, you haven't. At least, not convincingly.
 
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They have to make their approach above their power on stalling speed. Many aircraft not designed for carrier landings had to make the approach at a speed very close to the stall in order to land at an acceptable speed. The margin on carrier designed aircraft was always higher, usually because they stalled at a lower speed in their landing configuration. This is an aerodynamic factor which can not easily be altered.

Stall and you crash, it's that simple. Aircraft did not drop to the deck, they flew onto it (which by definition means that the wings have not stalled), usually landing in a three point attitude close to the stall.

Cheers

Steve
 
Steve, they don't actually "drop." As compared to landing on a land strip, they "drop." That's all I meant by that. In that regard, there's nothing special about the design of "carrier-built" aircraft. At bottom, I'm still just not seeing how a P-47 is not, by design, enabled to "drop" down on a carrier deck, at the proper attitude and air speed.
 
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