Ad: This forum contains affiliate links to products on Amazon and eBay. More information in Terms and rules
Every Heer infantry squad, armored vehicle and many supply vehicles were armed with an excellent LMG (either MG34 or MG42) which could fire against aircraft.
CAS aircraft which attack an army provided with this much light flak can expect casualties. Nobody else was so well provided with light flak and certainly not Japan where the F4U operated.
The F4U4 was the fastest US fighter at SL according to Dean, "America's Hundred Thousand".
Wouldn't that measure be a little bit risky for the pilot, taking in consideration that oxygen systems could malfunction at any point of the sortie or be battle damaged in enemy engagements.
I don't think I would feel safe stuck with oxygen during the entire mission.
It's the time frame that makes difference re. tail falling off. If those 25 occurrences were spread over 3 years of service, perhaps nobody would've talked too much. But if that happened, roughly speaking, once a week, on not such a great numbers of planes delivered, issue becomes more serious.
If this is correct then total IJA light flak production from 1938 to 1945 was only about 3,000 weapons. Furthermore 80% of IJA light flak had a ROF of only 300 rounds per minute. The numbers aren't even close compared to the Heer. Furthermore German army light flak was qualitatively superior for the most part.Type 98 was the most popular light AA gun of IJA. About 80% of IJA light AA guns were Type 98. It first saw action in Nomonhan and it was used until the end of WWII.
Caliber : 20 mm
Rate of Fire : 300 rounds/min
Production Qty : 2,500
Actually, comparing any F4U to any Typhoon or for that matter any Tempest or any British fighter except for the later Sea Fury makes little sense because although the F4U was very effective as a land based fighter and fighter bomber it was essentially designed as a carrier borne fighter. As discussed numerous times in the past on this forum, an F4U purpose designed and manufactured for only land based use would undoubtedly have had better all around performance than the carrier F4U. Even though the Seafire and Sea Hurricanes were not very successful as carrier borne aircraft, the modifications they had to have to operate at sea negatively influenced their performance compared to the land based only versions. The fact that the F4U could more than hold it's own with most if not all land based piston engined WW2 and Korean War fighters, which before the Corsair arrived was thought impossible, is what makes the Corsair an iconic design.
What I was asking is why two planes quite similar, both with checkered development and both achieving great success as fighter bombers, yet one is viewed as "iconic" while the other as a footnote.