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This got me wondering, did the USN, RN or IJN have dual control trainers for their naval fighter pilots in WW2? Surely you weren't just given a Seafire, Wildcat or Zero and told to give it your best. For the British, the folding wing, dual control Percival Proctor seems ideal.
The 81% performance loss was a surprise. That said, I figured that the plane would lose a lot of climb/acceleration and sustained-g performance that it would basically be doomed unless it was far enough away to make a getaway from the combat-zone.
I can't speak for the Zero, but the US, Canadians, and Brits were blessed(?) with the AT6/SNJ/Harvard, a tricky, demanding, advanced trainer that was excellent preparation for the vicissitudes of a heavy, high powered fighter. Even today these planes are considered good prep for a modern nose dragger pilot wanting to step into a WWII warbird. If you could handle an SNJ competently, you were deemed safe to fly an F4F, F6F, TBF, SBD, etc, after a ground school course and a cockpit checkout.
That 81% is not a "cut-and-dried" figure. It varies with a lot of aircraft characteristics, most notably the offset distance of the engines from aircraft centerline.
Still I would guess any pilot out over the sea would rather be in an A3 with an engine out rather than an A4 with an engine out.
The A4 had a pretty reliable ejection seat and a seat pan with raft and survival gear. Egress from the A3 was through a downward escape chute about six feet aft of the pilot and barely wide enough for one human and one parachute. An A3 on one engine couldn't be trimmed to fly "hands off", so the moment the pilot left his seat, it would turn turtle. There was also a narrow hatch in the aft portion of the canopy where a crewman could sit and give taxi directions, as cockpit visibility wasn't stellar. There was a reason why A3D was said to mean "All Three Dead".
Douglas originally offered those planes with ejection seats, but the Navy said "Save weight without reducing performance or mission capability." Everything Douglas offered to eliminate was rejected by Navaer except ejection seats. The A3D's design mission was deep penetration nuclear delivery without enough fuel for a two-way trip. IOW: "Expendible".
Ejection seats of the day had a very narrow envelope. Successful ejections required certain minimums of speed and altitude, as well as a very limited sink rate. If you were low, slow and dirty and falling out of the sky, or if you weren't rightside up, you were toast. Why tote all that weight and dangerous pyrotechnics around if you're probably toast anyway?
The A3D's design was heavily based on meeting the 68,750 lb. weight requirement needed to operate off the Midway Class.
Interestingly, the USN was, in general, more concerned with "low and slow" survivability than USAF in the early days.
And they did. It was called the AJ1 Savage, two recips on the wings and a jet in the tail, a disaster with wings on it. Zero survivability in MiG country.
It's nice that it changed in later on. When we bought the CF-18 in the early 1980s it was a leading edge design. If we ever get the F-35 it will again give us top grade kit. Of course the ever shrinking quantity of the aircraft is an issue, I expect we'll have only two squadrons of F-35 active (Alberta and Quebec) with another for training (Alberta). That won't give us much capability if the Russians ever get their house in order and push for Arctic territory. Sort of reminds me of Malaya and its tiny force of Buffaloes, and even they got five active squadrons.
That's never going to be paid off, ever. Most of it is owed to ourselves, issued by the Bank of Canada. But still, to make a dent in that debt we need a climate tariff on everything from China - I don't care about the climate (in this instance), but let's get some money out of them. We also need to cut government spending on many things. Maybe we can sell Newfoundland, lol or let Quebec separate.
