What if: USAAC version of F4F

Shortround6 said:

This may be more an indication that Gen. MacArthur couldn't get along with anybody rather than evidence that the Army and Navy couldn't get along.

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Adm King certainly wasn't Mr. Congeniality.

Going through this thread again, has made me think somewhat of an opposite of the original question. What about a Navalized P-40? The biggest stumbling block is the Navys dislike of liquid cooled aircraft engines.

That aside though, I think the robustness of the Curtiss would lend itself well to carrier duty. I think the P-40 would take to the seas better than the F4F would take to land. The achilles heal of limited altitude for the Allison would rear its ugly head for sure.

2 other stumbling blocks are the poor view over the nose for landing ( Grumman aircraft had that humped back look for a reason) and the much longer take-off run of the P-40.
P-40s were flown off carriers in ferry operations but that might not be the same as flying combat missions.

What is the landing speed of the P-40?

energy the arresting hook system has to absorb is the weight of the aircraft X the speed squared. A change from a 75mph landing speed to an 85mph landing speed means about 28% more energy for the same weight airplane.

Maybe you could operate a 'Naval" P-40 from American Carriers, at least the big ones but why?

Maybe for the Germans who only needed a couple dozen planes for their carrier fleet it made sense to modify a land plane for carrier use but the US needed several hundred carrier fighters BEFORE the war and once the smaller carriers went in production the numbers needed went to the thousands. When production runs get that big the need to save time/money by using an existing design gets a lot smaller.

An interesting point of comparison between the F4F and P40, was that the P40 was considered a tricky plane to land according to Dean, "America's Hundred Thousand" Perhaps the most difficult of any AAF fighter. The F4F was a relatively easy plane to land on a carrier but much more difficult on land. My understanding is that the arresting gear would keep the Wildcat lined up after the hook caught but on a landing strip the Wildcat was easy to ground loop. The poor climb characteristics of the P40 would have been real drawback for fleet defense.

This thread has got me to wondering if the P-36 (or maybe even the P-35) was abandoned too early.
Both predate the F4F but used the same engine.

I don't think either plane ever saw the 2-stage supercharger that the F4F saw.
Like the F4F, if they had been developed further they would have benefitted from subsequent engine developments with corresponding performance improvements.

I think I realized this when I started this thread, but wondered whether Grumman (known for its efficiency in cranking out cost-effective durable machines) could have developed a worthwhile competitor based upon the basic F4F concept.

Back in message #15 of this thread I posted a link to a picture of a Curtiss company demonstrator Hawk 75 that may have been equipped with the 2 stage supercharger. It looks like the plane pictured in "America's Hundred thousand" anyway.
There apparently were two "P-35s" of an improved type. One was the XP-41 with inward retracting landing gear and and a two stage supercharger and the other, also with inward retracting landing gear had a turbo charger was the AP-4 company demonstrator. there seems to be a fair amount of confusion between these two planes with photos and descriptions sometimes being swapped. There were two planes and they did have different supercharger systems. The "turbo" version was later modified into the P-43.

Both planes did fly with a slightly earlier version of the supercharger set up used in the Wildcat. Being the first of it's kind maybe it wasn't quite ready for service use?

Interesting. I did "gloss" over that post. The P-43 was a Republic aircraft though, unless you were just speaking of the engine package being utilized in that aircraft. Perhaps the Air Corps did move on to the Allison to quick, trying to keep up with the trend in Europe.

I don't recall too many "war stories" of the P-40 being difficult to land. The only thing I recall reading that the British that used them had to unlearn using a 3 point landing technique as used in the Spitfire. The same article referenced that the P-40 liked to be set down on her main gear first and allowed to settle on the tail wheel. Different, but not difficult.

As far as seeing over the nose of the P-40 in a carrier situation, the British did it with the Seafire.

Recovery speed is an issue, but I don't think an issue that could not have been resolved.

The F4F was a fine carrier plane. In my eyes it is equally as important as the P-40. Both were "outdated" but both were crucial in the first part of the war for the survival of the U.S.

There is nothing in the P-40 that couldn't have been "fixed" to make it a carrier fighter.

Raise Canopy and seat to provide better forward view.

Make the wing fold.

Make the wing bigger to lower take-off (and landing speed) and fit drooping ailerons.

Maybe the landing gear would need modification, maybe it wouldn't.

It would need anti-corrosive treatment (paints) that the land plane doesn't.

Some of these things would mean performance penalties in top speed and climb, some don't. But they do mean that the naval version would has a number of parts not common to the land version and in all likelihood would not be built on the same production line. At best a separate line under the same roof and failing that, a separate factory which starts to destroy any production benefit from using the "common" airframe.

A slightly slower and slower climbing aircraft than a "land" P-40 that is to be built not in the hundreds but by the thousands in a separate facility doesn't seem to offer much over Wildcats that were built.