USA combat aircraft

[The Basket]

Why didn't the USA have a comparable aircraft in full production to the Spitfire/109 in the 1930s? It's odd that we critical to the Italians or Russians of Japanese for been behind but the Americans were also behind too.

 

[mikewint]

The answer is that in the interwar years, the U.S. Congress and public were very isolationist, and the United States was not the same sort of world leader it is today. That change came under Franklin Roosevelt, who orchestrated the largest military build-up in world history.
Prior to WWII the 174,000-man U.S. Army ranked nineteenth in size in the world, behind Portugal and only slightly ahead of Bulgaria. Its half-strength divisions were scattered among numerous posts, its equipment obsolete, and it relied heavily on the horse.
As for the air forces, following the armistice, demobilization of the Air Service was rapid and thorough. At the end of WWI the Air Service possessed 185 aero squadrons; 44 aero construction; 114 aero supply, 11 aero replacement, and 150 spruce production squadrons; 86 balloon companies; six balloon group headquarters; 15 construction companies; 55 photographic sections; and a few miscellaneous units. By Nov. 22, 1919, all had been demobilized except one aero construction, one aero replacement, and 22 aero squadrons, 32 balloon companies, 15 photographic sections, and a few miscellaneous units. Between Nov.11, 1918 and June 30, 1920, officer strength plummeted from 19,189 to 1,168, and enlisted strength dropped from 178,149 to 8,428.
So while the United States had participated only marginally in the First World War, the experience was sufficiently costly that Americans turned the country decidedly inward in the 1920s. We disarmed our military forces and swiftly dismantled the nation's war machinery. The United States Senate refused to ratify the Treaty of Versailles and rejected membership in the nascent League of Nations. Congress in 1922 effectively closed the American market to foreign vendors with the Fordney-McCumber Tariff, among the highest in United States history, and the Smoot-Hawley Tariff eight years later. Washington also insisted that the Europeans repay the entirety of the loans extended to them by the US Treasury during the war. And in 1924 the republic for the first time in its history imposed a strict limit on the number of immigrants who could annually enter the country. Among those eventually excluded (though none could yet know it) were thousands of Jewish would-be fugitives from Nazi persecution. Militarily, diplomatically, commercially, financially, even morally, Americans thus turned their backs on the outside world.

Then came the Great Depression. By 1932, some thirteen million Americans were out of work, one out of every four able and willing workers in the country. Given the demography of the labor force and prevailing cultural norms that kept most women—and virtually all married women—out of the wage-paying economy, a 25 percent unemployment rate meant that, for all practical purposes, every fourth household in America had no breadwinner.

 

[Shortround6]

One has to be very careful of timing when making some of these comparisons.
For instance the Spitfire only made it into production in 1938 (ordered in 1936) and By Dec 1938 was only equipping two squadrons. Neither of which was declared operation until 1939. Things did improve rapidly at that point. Although the first 70-80 had fixed pitch props?
The 109 While in production much, much earlier was pretty much in the Jumo 210 phase.
In 1938 there were around a Dozen 109s built with DB 601 engines, depends on how you count prototypes or test aircraft. 10 109E-0s, a couple of 109E-1s (used for testing) perhaps a few 109E-3s (also used for testing) and a few prototypes. Yes they did build around 850 109Es in the first 8 months of 1939.
US had ordered 524 P-40s in April of 1939. Back in July of 1937 they had ordered 210 P-36As and combat between P-36As and 109C/Ds with their 700hp Jumo 210s might have proved interesting?

And the difference between the the US and Italians, Russians, Japanese is that the US had better engines already in the works which allowed for better aircraft to come on line quicker. The Wright R-2600 was going into small scale production with 163 built in 1939 (small numbers in 1938 = 39 engines) and work had started on the R-2800 in March of 1937. Work had actually started earlier on an 18 cylinder R-2600 but when P & W found out about the Wright R-2600 they upped the displacement.
It can take around 3 years to go from design to 5th production engine if things go well for the US.

Mikewint has painted a very vivid picture of the US economy of the times and I would add that once again, many of us do not take geography into account. The US needs for aircraft were different than the European needs. With only Canada and Mexico on our borders, the need for strong armies or air forces just wasn't a high priority as opposed to a strong Navy. Stop the attackers before they made land fall. Any war game scenarios about invasions usually had foreign power "X" sailing across the Atlantic and seizing a Caribbean Island as a staging point before continuing on to mainland America. The actual ability of aircraft in the first 1/2 of the 1930s to operate at even Caribbean to US distances was nil.

B-17s created quite a stir (and political fall out) when they "intercepted" the Ocean Liner Rex in May 1938.
Interception of the Rex - Wikipedia

The US was not thinking about expeditionary forces to other continents for most of the 1930s.

 

[The Basket]

In other aspects of aviation...Certainly civilian and bombers and larger aircraft in general the USA had a big advantage.

 

[Glider]

Congress in 1922 effectively closed the American market to foreign vendors with the Fordney-McCumber Tariff, among the highest in United States history, and the Smoot-Hawley Tariff eight years later. Washington also insisted that the Europeans repay the entirety of the loans extended to them by the US Treasury during the war. And in 1924 the republic for the first time in its history imposed a strict limit on the number of immigrants who could annually enter the country. Militarily, diplomatically, commercially, financially, even morally, Americans thus turned their backs on the outside world.

Does this sound horribly familiar?

 

[parsifal]

I agree that the US was lagging, and that the main reason for that gap can be traced to Us isolationism. Something we are about to witness again I fear.

What were the causes and what were the characteristics of isolationism?

After World War I the US attempted to become less involved in world affairs.

"The US refused to join the League of Nations. Although President Wilson pushed hard for US membership, opposition in the US Senate was significant. Americans, after learning of the destruction and cost of World War I, did not want the United States to become entangled in another European conflict which could lead to another devastating war. Americans viewed the nations of Europe as conflict prone and likely to become involved in internal and external disputes which could draw in the United States into another war which really had little to do with American interests.

The US closed the doors to immigration during the 1920's. Early on the US had excluded Chinese, Japanese, and other Asians, but later the US began to exclude even Europeans, particularly eastern and southern Europeans.

Why did the US, a nation of immigrants, suddenly turn against immigration?

Answers: 1) anti-European feelings after WWI; 2) organized labor believed cheap immigrant labor forced down wages; 3) railroads and basic industries were well developed by 1920's and industrialists no longer felt the need for masses of unskilled workers; 4) more established Americans descended from northern Europe felt recent immigrants from eastern and southern Europe could never be truly American, and they also saw them as inferior; 5) radical political movement and ideologies such as socialism, communism, and anarchism were viewed as European in origin and as potential threats to political stability in the United States.

Immigration Laws:

1) Quota Act of 1921 – limited immigration from each country to 3 % of total number who had immigrated in 1910 and set a yearly limit of 350,000

2) The 1924 quota reduced the quota to 2%, the base year changed from 1910 to 1890. This discriminated against eastern and southern Europeans because many had come to the US after 1890

3) National Origins Act of 1929 – the base year was moved to 1920, but total number was set at 150,000

The War of Tariffs:

America set high tariffs on imports to keep out foreign products. This raised prices for American consumers because cheaper foreign products were kept out of the US market. It also took away an essential market (the US) from many European and Latin American countries. People in these countries lost their jobs as factories were unable to sell their products to the US, and farmers began to accumulate huge surpluses. Eventually foreign nations responded by raising their own tariffs and excluding American manufactured and farm products from foreign markets.

War Debts Unpaid:

The nations of Europe had accumulated huge debts during World War I when they had borrowed massive sums of money from the US to buy war goods. By 1918 the total amount owed to the US was about $10 billion. The US lowered interest rates on loans when Europeans faced difficulties in repaying, but high tariffs in the US prevented Europeans from earning the dollars they needed to pay off the loans.

The European Allies looked to war reparations from Germany as the solution to their debt problems. In 1921 a Reparations Commissions fixed the total amount of German reparations at $33 billion. Germany however was in the middle of an economic crises with high unemployment and hyper-inflation and was completely unable to pay the reparations. Germany attempted to borrow money from European and US banks to pay the reparations, but their were limits to what the Germans could borrow. By 1930 Germany was totally unable to make any other reparation payments.

A Legacy of Bitterness:

European allies claimed that they had done most of the fighting and had suffered the most during the war, and that consequently, the US should cancel all war debts. The US claimed that as much as 1/3 of the loans had been made after the armistice and that therefore the Europeans should have to pay. In the end most of the war debts and most of Germany's reparations remained unpaid. Nonetheless, the US's unsuccessful attempt to collect the war debts increased Europe's resentment against the US. Also, the Allies' unsuccessful attempt to collect reparations from the Germans contributed to a feeling of bitterness among the German people that contributed to the rise of Hitler in the early 1930's

American relations with Latin America in the early 1900's had been characterized by US intervention to protect American investments and lives, and to uphold the Roosevelt Corollary of the Monroe doctrine which said the US had the right to act as a police officer of the Western Hemisphere. The Latin Americans resented US military intervention and the influence of American business on their economies and governments. American critics of US policy called it "dollar diplomacy" while Latin American critics called it "Yankee imperialism."

By the early 1930's however relations with Latin America had improved as Coolidge and Hoover worked hard to develop friendlier relations. The State Department declared the Monroe doctrine would no longer be used to justify US intervention in Latin American domestic affairs, and Latin American nations encouraged US investment and gave greater protection to these investments.

Although Harding and Coolidge recommended that the US join the World Court, the Senate was influenced by Americans fears of getting entangled in European alliances and affairs and refused to join the World Court.

The US worked with Great Britain and Japan to establish a naval holiday and a 53 ratio for capital ships (battleships and heavy cruisers) to help stop the naval armaments race in Asia. France and Italy would have fleets of equal size with a ratio of 1:.75 in this Five Power Treaty.

In the Four Power Pact, Japan, Great Britain, the US and France agreed to respect one another's rights in the Pacific and consult in a case of aggression.

In the Nine-Power Treaty nine powers with interests in Asia agreed to maintain the Open Door Policy for China and guarantee the territorial integrity of China.

The Kellog-Briand Pact or the Pact of Paris, attempted to outlaw war and was accepted by 62 nations. This was the idea of 1928 US Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg and French foreign minister Aristide Briand. The pact was called "wishful thinking" since each country added its own reservations, not one outlawed a war of self defense (and most countries claim each war is a war of self-defense), and the document said nothing about enforcement.

The Peace structure began to crumble when Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931 in an effort to wipe out "foreign" influence from the Far East. Japan violated the Open Door Policy, the Covenant of the League of Nations which it had signed, the Nine Power Treaty, and the Kellogg-Briand Pact. Nonetheless, neither the US nor the League of Nations did anything to stop Japan beyond making statements of protest. Japan withdrew from the League of Nations and made preparations to invade and conquer China and Southeast Asia.

Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany realized that they too could begin programs of aggression after 1933 without facing any real danger from the crumbling world peace structure".

 

[Shortround6]

The US may have been behind in actual military purchases but was not behind in technical innovations or design. Even in fighters.

First flight 20 March 1932
Loser in the competition

First flight July 1932
and

First flight January 1934 although developed from

First flight in 1931

Continued

 

[Shortround6]

For Biplanes you had the Grumman FF-1

All metal fuselage, enclosed cockpit retracting landing gear first flight 29 December 1931.
evolved into

first flight 18 October 1933.
Rival Curtiss was not being left behind.

first flight in 1933

Now just how innovative or advanced were the Arado 65 and 68 or the He 51 in comparison?
The Italian CR 32?
The Japanese Ki 10?
The French Blériot SPAD S.510?
Even the Dewoitine D.500/D.501 does not look all that advanced;

Prototype first flew on 18 June 1932

 

[The Basket]

If one looks at the attacks on December 1941, the main American defensive fighter is the Curtiss P-40B which even been kind is not as good as the latest British or German fighter.
I'm not even going to mention the Buffalo.
In my view, the perceived weakness of the USA in 1941 led directly to Pearl Harbour. Had the Japanese had the full understanding that they are about to open the gates to their own hell then they may have acted different. Although knowing about Japan in 1940s probably not.

 

[Shortround6]

You may want to revise your view. The P-40C had been out of production for 8 months at the time of Pearl Harbor, let alone the P-40B which went out of production 1-2 months earlier. Curtis was cranking out around 150 P-40s a month in the spring of 1941. There were only 131 P-40Bs built. Production shifted to the P-40D in July and the P-40E in August. Curtiss was building around 250 P-40s a month in the fall of 1941, granted a large number were for the British.

Not mentioning the Buffalo the way you did also shows that your perception is off. There were 509 Buffaloes built, 346 of them for export. USN got 163. Of those 9 were delivered in Dec 1941 and 1 in Jan 1942 to close out the order. AS of the end of November 1941 there were just over 400 F4Fs built.

BTW there were 748 P-39s built as of the end of Nov 1941 and 154 P-38s and 70 P-51 Mustangs (British contract).

I would also say that taking a "snap shot" of a particular day or even month and trying to draw conclusions about the state of a countries level of technical advancement can lead to some real errors. One country or another rarely (try never) held the lead for years on end. They often swapped back and forth. Sometimes more than once a year.

You may also want to consider the P-47 in your view. It takes time to bring a plane into service. Sept 1940 saw 733 production P-47B&C models placed on order, May saw the first flight of the XP-47B, Oct 1941 sees an order for 850 P-47Ds, First production P-47B is rolled out the door Dec 21, 1941 but needs changes (perils of ordering of the drawing board). Yes it takes quite a while to get the P-47 into squadron use but then it is one of the largest, heaviest and most complicated fighters in existence at the time, a distinction it shares with the P-38. I am sure we can all see how backwards the US was in fighter design in 1941 (sarcasm).

 

[pinehilljoe]

Does this sound horribly familiar?

please this is the one forum i can escape to and not be blasted with contemporary politics

 

[The Basket]

Highlighting the P-47 shows more sarcasm
So let's see...Was the P-47 ready for Pearl Harbour? No.
Invasion of Russia? No
Battle of Britain? No.
As you said in 1941 had plenty of designs plenty of prototypes and aircraft in production but which aircraft were actually in combat December 1941 when the Japanese attacked?
Or at Midway in 1942? Wildcats and Buffalo's?
America was behind and yes they caught up. But behind they were.

 

[Shortround6]

Hmmm,
let's flip things shall we.
Was the KI43 ready for Pearl Harbor? yes
Invasion of Russia? Ah....No
Battle of Britain? again NO.

Since the US was only in combat for 3 weeks in 1941 it seems you can pick and choose which aircraft you want to count.
I would note that the much of the RAF's combat in 1941 was borne by Hurricanes in P-40s. Not because the British were behind in design or development but because they choose not to deploy their best fighter to other theaters and kept thenm at home for home defense. Yet the US is criticized for slow development by keeping it's best fighters at home and sending the 2nd string to the far flung outposts?
Granted some of them, like the P-38 weren't really ready for combat but then few American squadrons were regardless of type of fighter due to lack of experience.

Harping on the Buffalo shows you don't understand what was going on. Jan 27th 1942 saw VF-2 fly their Buffaloes of the Lexington and hand them over to the Marines. VF-2 was reequipped with F4F-3A wildcats. VF-2 was the last Navy squadron to use the Buffalo from a carrier and in fact had been the ONLY Navy squadron equipped with Buffaloes since Sept of 1941 if not before. Yes the Marines got one squadron worth of Buffaloes but then the Marines in 30s and early 40s tended to get leftovers from the Army and Navy.

Please remember that getting new aircraft from the factories to combat zones took weeks longer for the Americans than it did for just about anybody else.

You claim the F4F was Behind. First service use of a mechanical two speed supercharger. Beat R-R by over a year. Production F4F-3s going to a service squadron about 12-13 months before the prototype MK IX Spitfire flies. Four gun F4F carries almost exactly the same weight of guns and ammo as a Spitfire with two belt feed 20mm guns and four .303. F4F carries 44% more internal fuel.
They won't do each others jobs or at least, sure didn't start out that way. The F4F dead ended well before the Spitfire but was still a useful airplane into 1944 which is more than can be said for many fighters that first flew in 1938 or a bit after.

 

[BLine22]

The P-40 may have been lacking in comparison to the Spitfire and BF-109 but is competitive against any other fighter in the world at the beginning of 1942. The F4F as a naval fighter proved it could compete against the Zero using the proper tactics. In other areas the U.S. already had the B-17, B-25, B-26, A-20, TBF, SBD, and C-47.

 

[The Basket]

Ok....
So did the USA in 1940 have a fighter that matched the latest 109 Emil in performance and production and numbers in service?
If the answer is no then America is behind. Simple as that.

 

[Robert Porter]

From my own understanding of history and having been married to a Brit I have to say most Eurpoeans do not compare apples to apples as we say. In England, Germany, Italy etc when an aircraft rolled off the assembly line it could be delivered to an operational unit the next day. The US thankfully saw little if any combat on or near our shores barring U-Boat attacks and some minor invasions in the Aleutian islands, with the notable exception of Pearl Harbor which is near as far from mainland US as England itself. So for aircraft produced here in our factories we were often faced with months of lead time, especially in the 41 and 42 timeframe to get the produced aircraft to a theater of operations.

All that being said, I believe as someone above pointed out technical leadership passed back and forth throughout the war years and beyond. However it is extremely difficult in the early years of the war to compare aircraft that were operational since the US was a long way away from most of the areas aircraft were operated in combat. We often had aircraft on a par with anything else but could not get them to the front lines in sufficient numbers quickly. Hence the appearance of the US "lagging" behind.

 

[buffnut453]

Robert,

You're forgetting the requirement the British had to supply aircraft to the outposts of Empire. Egypt, Libya, Palestine, Iraq, Malaya/Singapore, Burma, India, eastern Africa, South Africa...and that's without even mentioning Australia, Canada, New Zealand. Viewing British defence issues in 1939-1941 as purely a European problem doesn't match reality - the Brits had many of the problems that America had in 1941 trying to distribute new aircraft to the front line but with the added problem of actually fighting a war while doing it (and trying to aid other nations, like Greece, that were resisting fascist aggression).

Germany and France had similar, but less broad, issues. The Luftwaffe had to supply aircraft to wherever there was fighting, largely driven by Hitler's constant appetite to escalate the war irrespective of whether Germany had the resources to accomplish his objectives. Even France had to support north Africa, Syria and other colonies like French Indo-China.

Personally, I don't think America was far behind other nations from a technological standpoint. The bigger lag was in rearmament at the scale necessary for a full-blown conflict. The European nations began that process in the latter half of the 1930s but America truly only started kicking into gear 2 years after the invasion of Poland. That said, once the sleeping giant was roused, it became an unstoppable force bringing both quantity and quality to the war that the Axis powers were unable to counter.

Just my two penn'orth.

Cheers,
Mark

 

[GrauGeist]

In all fairness, the USN and USAAC had not been engaged in any military conflicts while the rest of the world had been at war for several years - thus the pilot experience, which would be the determining factor in U.S. fighters at the onset (F2A versus IJN/IJA types, for example) is what proved to be the biggest liability - not the equipment.
The other contributing factor to the U.S. "lagging behind", was that it was not at war.

Japan opened that can of worms and compare the U.S. inventory between December 1941 and December 1942. Or better still, make that comparison between two year's time for an even bigger contrast. Tell me what other nation on earth managed to leap forward from a stand-still to outproducing all other nations combined in such a short time?

And as has been mentioned before, the U.S. isolationist policies coupled with slowly emerging from the Great Depression put a limit on the military. The U.S. did possess several types that were very competitive with it's contemporaries as of 1939, and while development progress was slow for reasons I just mentioned, there were still some very potent fighters coming down the line.

 

[tomo pauk]

Ok....
So did the USA in 1940 have a fighter that matched the latest 109 Emil in performance and production and numbers in service?
If the answer is no then America is behind. Simple as that.

P-40.
778 copies produced in 1940. 357 mph ( link )

 

[Robert Porter]

Robert,

You're forgetting the requirement the British had to supply aircraft to the outposts of Empire. Egypt, Libya, Palestine, Iraq, Malaya/Singapore, Burma, India, eastern Africa, South Africa...and that's without even mentioning Australia, Canada, New Zealand. Viewing British defence issues in 1939-1941 as purely a European problem doesn't match reality - the Brits had many of the problems that America had in 1941 trying to distribute new aircraft to the front line but with the added problem of actually fighting a war while doing it (and trying to aid other nations, like Greece, that were resisting fascist aggression).

Germany and France had similar, but less broad, issues. The Luftwaffe had to supply aircraft to wherever there was fighting, largely driven by Hitler's constant appetite to escalate the war irrespective of whether Germany had the resources to accomplish his objectives. Even France had to support north Africa, Syria and other colonies like French Indo-China.

Personally, I don't think America was far behind other nations from a technological standpoint. The bigger lag was in rearmament at the scale necessary for a full-blown conflict. The European nations began that process in the latter half of the 1930s but America truly only started kicking into gear 2 years after the invasion of Poland. That said, once the sleeping giant was roused, it became an unstoppable force bringing both quantity and quality to the war that the Axis powers were unable to counter.

Just my two penn'orth.

Cheers,
Mark

I agree that there were needs to move aircraft by other nations great distances, but I was responding to the statement re: the Battle of Britain timeframe. And while other countries had to move some aircraft long distance the US had to move ALL aircraft a long way as well as aircrews, support crews, entire spares inventory and the entire base infrastructure in most cases. Aside from the US, only Japan moved men and material that far in large numbers. North Africa is close for the RAF compared to the US moving men and material to European or Pacific fronts or Africa. What seems to escape Europeans about distances is for instance the distance for the RAF to move equipment from say London to Egypt is LESS than the distance for the US to move equipment from our west coast to shipping ports on our own east coast. Then they faced an even longer journey to get to their respective combat operational areas. Not saying that all combat aircraft were produced on our west coast just illustrating the point.

So I honestly think that fact is often overlooked and undervalued when folks speak of the US lagging, not to mention due to our isolationism, right or wrong it was there, we were kicked rather quickly into the affray long after the other parties had been in open combat. As Japan's Yamamoto supposedly pointed out, the "Sleeping Giant" was awake and pretty much ticked off. I think our production record alone during WW2 is second to no others.

I guess what I am trying to say is I am slightly offended when I hear comparisons like this between pre war US and even early war US and our Allies and the Axis who in most cases were at war since 1939 or earlier. The technology gap was not as portrayed but certainly the ability to bring that technology to bear in a meaningful sense and numbers was there.