Haztoys said:
Its my understanding that at the start of WW11..The British got American Aircraft.... And did not like a one of them ..And would not take the rest of the planes they ordered......Right??
And the Americans used the same plane with good results..
What gives?? .. What was it the Brit's found so bad ... ??
Have a good day
David
Hazardous Toys inc
First of all, you have to put yourself back 60 years and think British.
The British and the French, until the middle of the 1930's, were the two leading aviation nations in the world. Between them they held the majority of the civilian and military aviation records set between the wars. they regarded their own aviation technology as second to none, and rightly so.
"Buy British" was taken as a given. It was generally the exception to the norm if a British national company or institution used something that was made in another industrialised nation. It was a fact of life that lthe British made and operated their own aircraft to their own requirements and sepcifications.
In the mid to late 1930s, with a war approaching, the British government realised that the Depression, war debt repayments and various self-created financial crises, had weakened the British economy and aviation production industry to the extent that it would be necessary to look to foreign producers to answer their requirements. So they began to llok elsewhere to supplement their own production.
The obvious choices were to supply airframes were France and the USA and Canada. France was likely to be immediately involved in a European conflict, and had its own aircraft production problems. Canada was viewed by the British as a profitable but lightly populated colony, vacluable for its natural resources, but not really a powerhouse of advanced aircraft production. So, the British naturally turned to the United States as a supplier of aircraft.
The first US built aircraft to be used by the British operationally was the Lockheed A-28/A-29 Hudson, which stemmed from an urgent British need for a navigational trainer and maratime partol aircraft. Despite the furore that it caused in the British establishment, the Hudson was an immediate and long-term sucess, well like by its crews and well fitted to the roles it operated in. The British Aircraft Purchasing Commission initially ordered 200 in 1938, and by the end of 1939 ordered an additional 150. In 1940 they ordered 20 improved Hudson IIs and then 414 Hudson IIIs with more powerful engines. Before the beginning of Lend-Lease the British purchased close to 1,500 Hudsons of various marks.
The sucess of the Hudson in RAF service led to the British ordering a larger and more powerful version, the B-34 Ventura. The British ordered 674 straight off the bat, the first flying with the RAF in mid 1942. Later there were orders for another 550, supplied through Lend-Lease.
Similarly, the Martin Baltimore was designed to specific British requirements and built exclusively in the USA, but never saw service in it country of origin. All 1575 built were ordered and used by the British or Commonwealth airforces. Again, the British were very pleased with the design, except for some initial problems with the rear defensive armament.. In the course of the war, the Baltimore went through 6 major upgrades, most of them at the suggestions of RAF representatives liasing with the Martin company. It saw frontline service in the Med and Italy and southern Germany, all the way up to 1945.
There is a VERY long list of US aircraft either designed or built, or both, for the RAF that the USAAF then went on to purchase and operate for itself. There is an almost equally long list of planes which were adopted by the British.
The RAF used or adopted many US fighter types to its own requirements and then put them into action.
P-40; Adopeted by the RAF as the Kittyhawk. First flew with the RAF in August 1941. Various marks were then fitted with British Merlins to improve altitude performance. Saw service with the RAF until 1945. Over 1750 Kittyhawks were procured by the RAF (or about 15% of total production). Generally regarded as inferior to the Spitfire, it served well as a low altitude fighter bomber.
Brewster F2A Buffalo; The British accepted 438 B-339Bs destined for Holland and then ordered 170 B-339Es. Both types were refitted with British armament and radio equipement and then sent to the Far East where the served in 7 RAF, RAAF and NZAF squadrons.
P-39. Here the RAF did have problems with the aircraft. They considered it to be overweight and a poor performer at altitude. Like the Buffalo, it was deemed unsuitable for ETO combat operations and was sent to the Far East as a ground attack aircraft. It was rearmed with a 20mm Hispano (probably a wise decision) instead of the slow firing 37mm cannon.
P-38. The RAF P-38s (Model 322-61s in British parlance, 627 initailly ordered) were hamstrung because the export versions had the turbosuperchargers deleted (hence affecting altitude performance) and had props rotating both ways (fine for bombers and transoprts, not so good for a fighter). The USAAF concurred with the RAF assesment of the Modell 322, and after testing designated them as trainers and experimental airframes. The second order of 524 P-38s were absorbed into USAAF production as either P-38F or P-38G Lightnings.
P-51; One of the greatest sucess stories of a foreign fighter in RAF service. The RAf operated some 15 squadrons of Mustang I/IIs and 20 squadrons of Mustang III/IVs during the war. Initially designed to British specifications for am advanced low level tactical fighter, the P-51 went on the become the USAAFs primary fighter in the ETO, when mated to a British Merlin.
P-47. Used as the primary fighter type by the RAF in the CBI theatre, mostly because of its excellent rough field performance and long range, some 825 P-47Ds (both bubbletops and razorbacks) were supplied to the RAF as either Thunderbolt I or Thunderbolt IIs. Some 16 RAF squadrons operated the P-47 out of airfields in Burma, China and India.
The FAA also equipped Helcats, Corsairs, Wildcats (martlets), Avengers, B-24s, B-17s and other US types in its operations through the war. At one stage the FAA had 15 squadrons equipped with Wildcats and 12 squadrons of Hellcats. The FAA recieved over 1900 Corsairs during the war.
I think that the British not liking US aircraft is about as far from the truth as you can get. There were problems with US types, yes. But most of those weren't catastrophic. The RAF and FAA used almost every US fighter and bomber type in some role or another, many quite extensively. Remember that the British built some of the greatest aircraft of the war; Spitfire, Hurricane, Lancaster, Mosquito, Typhoon, Tempest, Wellington ect. Despite all this, there were still close to 20,000 US aircraft operated by the RAF or Commonwealth airforces during the war, not something that happens if they "did not like one of them".