P-61 or Reverse Lend Lease Mosquito

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The USN chose not to operate F-4s from their smaller Essex class carriers in favor of smaller F-8s even though they operated the larger A-3 Skywarriors from those same ships. The French Aeronavale selected the F-8 over the F-4 for their smaller carriers as well.
 

Data link is fairly new in it's current widespread use. We don't need it, or GPS to ID aircraft, drop bombs, or navigate. Does it help those things yes, but are we incapable of doing our job without it, no. It would be totally irresponsible to develop, build, buy and use something that would be easily hamstrung or negated by simple loss of GPS signal or Link 16.

Cheers,
Biff
 
I certainly hope so, I agree it would be irresponsible but that has not stopped us before.
 
What would have been cheaper in the long run would have been if the Royal Navy was able to tender to develop its own carrier based strike fighter right from the start, rather than as a multi role, joint RN/RAF platform - and the government being a bit stiffer in its resolve regarding supporting a fluctuating aviation industry, of course. The Americans learned that the hard way too, with the F-111B being not what the navy wanted. The P.1154 was a far more complex aircraft in concept than the basic F-4J, being capable of supersonic speeds, but also STOVL (rather than V/STOL - Harriers almost never took off from a hover; limits their useable fuel and warload, hence the ski jump on Harrier carriers)

EKB said:
A standard F-4J generally outperformed the Rolls Royce version and would have cost y'all half as much.
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Yep, certainly did, but it was argued that its acceleration at low speed after take-off was greater and it had a greater range, but suffered at altitude and in all out speed, there were also issues with the afterburners. The RAF actually bought F-4Js to prop up the supply of FGR.2s that it operated; they were bog standard, powered by J-79s and operated by only the one squadron.

EKB said:
Pork and Politics are inseparable.
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Pretty much, but isn't all defence procurement? After all, even when the RN was working on the P.1154, McAir was proposing a Spey engine Phantom to meet its needs and pushing it, even though the navy wanted the P.1154 at that stage - there's the agenda right there. The reason the USA won defence contracts in Europe in the 60s was because of two things, mutual defence aid after the poverty of war and The Hard Sell.
 
The V-1 didn't have an intertial system.It had a crude directional autopilot to turn it onto course after launch and a wing-leveling servo that used the smallish rudder to keep the V-1 laterally level and a small propeller on the nose that was, in fact, a vane anemometer. They knew the cruising speed, and they knew how many turns the small prop would turn to get a known distance. When the vane anemometer reached the pre-set number of turns, a trigger fired and snapped the elevator to full down. It was launched in more or less the correct direction to start with, made a single turn onto course, and that is why it was so inaccurate ... winds aloft make a simple course follower not quite accurate enough.

Early V-1s didn't have quite enough compressed air pressure, and the engine would cut out duing the pushover. Compressed air was used as the fuel pump AND as the power for the servos. Later, they added more pressure and the engines would run all the way down. We restored an engine and wanted to do the airframe, too, but we rather obviously weren't ever going to fly it, so we didn't restore the airframe. Ours LOOKS like a V-1 but is, in fact, a JB-2 "Loon" from the US build.
 
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Think your post is LONG enough? Stop that.

Yes, as high a Vmc as a B-26 Marauder. But, I was talking about fighters since that is what we primarily fly. B-26 Vmc is about 145 kts. when light and 165 kts when heavy.

The Mosquito manual SAYS 135 - 140 knots, but Steve Hinton said 160 - 165 knots when he flew it and checked personally. So that matches the B-26 at 32k lbs. per POH.

It would be tough to confuse a B-26 with a Mosquito, but they both need speed to live when one fan goes away.
 
Zipper730 said:
It was: I'm not sure how insistent they were about it, and how it would have affected cooperation between the UK & US if we refused to fit it, but they would remove the requirement from the Mosquito F Mk.II (which became the basis for the NF series).
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The Mosquito F.II never had a turret, nor was it intended to.


Zipper730 said:
The USAAF flew the Beaufighter
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Yes




The P-61 had a 2 stage supercharger - same as on the F6F and F4U-1 actually.

PS: You really should only reply to one or two posts at a time. That really is a mess.
 
HeyZipper,

You need to start listening to people about shorter posts. 3 - 4 paragraphs about the same subject are considered long.

When you change topics, wait until you aren't making consecutive posts, ecxcept maybe on rare occasions.

Etiquette counts in here, even among friendly antagoninsts. If it gets unfriendly, the moderators will step in and stiop it dead in its tracks.
 

Thank you for squashing that. As a rotorhead here, I would have had to respond to that as well. Even as an H-60 guy, I have a deep love for tge greatest Helicopter ever built (UH-1).
 
The British F4-J were purchased as the new demands to defend the Falklands required extra resources quickly and the F4-J was the obvious choice.
One advantage of the British F4's and the Spey jets which is small but sometimes important was they didn't smoke. Any other F4 you could almost see them coming the moment they were in the line of sight, the Speys didn't. I think they also were better in the climb as power to weight becomes more important and the extra power of the Spey came into force.
USN F4's did operate from the Ark Royal at times on exercise and the main problem (apart from some pilots finding the much smaller Ark Royal a little tight for comfort) was a much reduced max take off weight. RN F4's had a higher angle of attack due to an extended nose wheel arrangement. It extended for launch the USN F4's obviously didn't have this mod..
 
A lot of planes flew off of carriers they weren't normally operated from. In WW II quite a few Army fighters were flown ashore from carriers in various operations. However this was often done at much reduced weights. Achieved by such expedients as little or no ammo, few, if any guns, and restricted the amount of fuel. The planes were to be re-armed and then fueled and loaded with ammo at the shore base they were flown to. There are a number of American carrier planes that were allowed higher take-off weights from land runways than from carrier decks. And as been noted by a previous poster, not all US carrier decks were teh same, different weight restrictions depending on which carrier (or class of carrier)
A lot of arms deals in the 60s, 70s and 80s involved trade-offs. Yes it is politics in part but expecting your allies to buy your "defense products" and keep your workers employed with their tax dollars is rather unrealistic. Larger production runs also reduce costs for everyone. And sometimes the offsets are obscure. The US Army adopted the M240 machine gun as part of an offset deal for Belgium "buying" F-16s. Even though the F-16s were actually built in Belgium.
While NATO was glad enough to get US handouts in the 1950s they were beginning to realize that accepting such hand outs, or buying American aircraft/weapons already in production was stifling any growth their own industries might of had.
 
Note that the Mosquito NF.II wasn't the basis for all following Mosquito night fighters - it was the FB.VI, utilisng the 'Standard wing', strengthened with spar caps, and hard points 'plumbed' for ordnance or fuel tanks.
The NF.II was a logical development of the F.II, and was eventually replaced by the NF.XII (basically the same aircraft but with centimetric radar), which in turn was supplemented then replaced by the NF.XIII, utilising the FB.VI wing, and then the two-stage Merlin versions followed.
 
GregP

Think your post is LONG enough?
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I think it might have gone a bit too far...
Yes, as high a Vmc as a B-26 Marauder.
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And the Marauder was known for a high landing-speed to begin with, and with an engine dead it only went significantly higher.
But, I was talking about fighters since that is what we primarily fly.
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You fly old vintage WWII aircraft? That's pretty cool, but remember the Mosquito did start out as a bomber by intent, a reconnaissance plane first because the UK wasn't confident in a bomber without defensive armament.
The Mosquito manual SAYS 135 - 140 knots, but Steve Hinton said 160 - 165 knots when he flew it and checked personally. So that matches the B-26 at 32k lbs. per POH.
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What does POH mean?
It would be tough to confuse a B-26 with a Mosquito, but they both need speed to live when one fan goes away.
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Wait, that also means you'd get a substantial roll-rate if you pulled one engine back a bit and pushed the other up quickly when maneuvering at altitude right?


wuzak

The Mosquito F.II never had a turret, nor was it intended to.
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I'd almost swear they had thought of making a turret fighter to counter the Fw.200 Condor.
Yes
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That's pretty interesting: How come it never got a formal designation?
The P-61 had a 2 stage supercharger - same as on the F6F and F4U-1 actually.
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Okay
You really should only reply to one or two posts at a time. That really is a mess.
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Yeah, I'm sorry about that
 
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