Dave Fenton
Recruit
- 1
- Jan 19, 2009
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know anything about night fighters f6f on the randolph cv 15 1945?
skip, know anything about cv 15 randolph night fighters...
know anything about f6f on the randolph...night fighter?
In the Pacific Theatre of operations, it didn't seem like the extra power of the .50 did much good against practically unarmored Japanese fighters. 6x.30-06 with API ammo with a few more rounds per gun would do just as well against thin skinned Zeroes and save a ton of extra weight in both gun weight and ammo.
For USN F4F's in Torch following is a cleaned up cut and paste of previous responses by me to others on previous threads follows. To summarize, the F4F did better against the French fighters in Torch than v Zeroes (around 2:1 v around 1:1 in a much larger sample of combats in 1942 v Zeroes) but the situation was more favorable and the opponent less formidable (by all evidence of the thrashings administered to most Western fighters units by JNAF ones in 1942).I'm pretty sure Wildcats or Martlets were used quite a bit in the early stages of the war in the Mediterranean, and I know they were used for Operation Torch. How did they perform in that setting?
All the actual air opposition was French. The F4F's claimed a single Bf109 but it tragically turned out to be an RAF recon Spitfire from Gibraltar, which the USN aircrews were apparently given no warning might be present in the area. German a/c weren't a farfetched possiblity; the Germans asked for access to North African bases for their a/c to assist the French repelling the Allies, but the Vichy authorities declined.Is there any record of the F4F fighting German fighters in Torch, or was the opposition mostly Vichy French?
We had P-38s in the theatre, I'd suggest they split up interceptor duty whenever possible (like Hurricanes going for the bombers as Spits fought the 109s). Remember I'm talking about the early pacific war, when the F4F was a vital part of the effort.What about bombers? And ships?
British Hurricanes had 8 or 12 rifle caliber mgs, and they mostly switched to 4 x 20mm cannon in the Pacific and Burma/India theatres.
I agree that the 4-gun armament was better than 6, but the plane was still overweight. I think it was a bit overarmored as well, there's something to be said for not getting shot up as much in the first place.Clay, the armament on the F4F3 which was in use in the early fighting in the Pacific was four fifty cals with 400 rounds each. The F4F3 had superior performance to later Wildcats until the FM2 came along once again with four guns.The six fifties with reduced ammo load came in the F4F4 only because the British insisted on six guns, either because their pilots were not considered as good at gunnery as the USN pilots or because they did not understand the vast difference between the 30 cal and 50 cal. The USN did not like the six gun battery and in fact a number of F4F4s had the four gun battery. The primary mission of the Navy fighter was to defend the fleet against enemy bombers, torpedo planes and recon planes. The USN and AAF did not consider the 30 cal as adequate for the mission of the fighter by 1941. The 50 cal performed admirably against IJN AC and especially well against the big four engined flying boats and also in strafing against patrol craft and light escort vessels.
I think that I have read that it was even worse for the IJN in that the Zeros had to (or chose to) retain their drop tanks for combat over Guadalcanal. Can one of you experts please either confirm or deny this.During the Guadalcanal campaign the IJN suffered from the same disadvantages the LW did in BOB and the AAF did later in the ETO. The Wildcats were defending near their bases and the Zeros had to fly and fight hundreds of miles away from their bases.