Damn, how did I forget? The best float plane fighter ever. Does anyone have stats (speed and range) for it in floatplane configuration all I can find are the land based fighter version.
Ad: This forum contains affiliate links to products on Amazon and eBay. More information in Terms and rules
Well, the Aussies did build a single seat T-6 with an R-1820, the Boomarang, armed the same as a Spitfire V. And it never shot down an enemy aircraft. They used to get P-39's to escort it on ground attack missions.
Its predecessor the Wirraway did shoot down a plane.Well, the Aussies did build a single seat T-6 with an R-1820, the Boomarang, armed the same as a Spitfire V. And it never shot down an enemy aircraft. They used to get P-39's to escort it on ground attack missions.
A Fairey Seafox spotter plane was used by Ajax in the River Plate.This may have been done in a few fleet exercises and was done by the Warspite in Norway, much to the detriment of the German destroyer force. Obviously it only works if the enemy has both lousy AA guns and accompanying aircraft of even less performance than the planes doing the observing or "spotting".
From wiki the Graf Spee's plane was out of service, I read a book on the BoRP when I was a kid and Ajax had to undertake maneuvers to recover it at some time during the battle, they cant stay up there forever.Thank you
A Fairey Seafox spotter plane was used by Ajax in the River Plate.
True, and good point, though I don' think AT-6 is the same as an SBD. Performance though is about what I would expect at roughly 300 mph.
But if an SBD could sometimes shoot down a Zero with a top speed of ~ 250 mph I would expect it would do better if it could make 300 mph, right?
I think the main problem with the Boomerang is that it took the Aussies too long to develop it and it showed up in the field as a fighter in April 1943, by then a 300 mph fighter was way too far behind the curve. You wouldn't want to tangle with an A6M5 or a Ki-61 in that. A 300 mph fighter in 1941 or early 1942 though, maybe is a little bit more plausible.
The Avenger was a bus, so much drag. Empty weight is almost twice that of an SBD, it is a totally different animal. If they could get that T6 derived Boomerang to 300 mph with a 1,200 hp engine, they could have gotten an SBD to go that fast. Might have required trimming the wing down a little bit but I'm not even sure about that.
Spotting shells with scout / observation planes was rare in naval practice for the same reason the Norden bombsight didn't work - there were usually clouds or mist or smoke in the way... or the engagement was at night. Naval gunfire exchanges were also often too quick to register corrections being radioed in. I think usually what mattered more was spotting enemy ships before they came into contact, hence scouting from observation. The SBD itself was a "Scout Bomber".
And of course those were scout planes. Even three hundred km range was a fairly long distance for a surface vessel. Submarines were also routinely spotted that way, as were enemy smoke plumes. A scout, especially one that can deploy from some remote lagoon, doesn't have to be a full-fledged recon plane. The F1M was primarily a scout, despite it's short range and apparent utility as a fighter.
Well, they did design and build the Fieseler 167Was just looking at the Graf Zeppelin (the Ship) at 33550 tons and 35 knots, with a proposed air group of 30 ME 109's and only 12 JU 87's. Talk about a small air group. Interesting that they were nothing to have any VT squadron. I suppose with their small Navy that they looked at it being mostly a defensive adjunct.
Maybe and maybe not. Depends on how you get it to 300 mph. If you trim down that high lift but draggy wing, you're sacrificing the SBD's greatest ACM asset, it's maneuverability. Reducing weight would help with acceleration, rate of climb and general agility, but the real "magic wand" is drag reduction on a massive scale. Replace the 1820 with a two speed 1830 and a tapered stream lined cowling, fair the canopy a la A6M, smooth up the landing gear doors, eliminate all the "dive bomber stuff" mentioned earlier, replace the dive brakes with a smooth, quick deploy fowler combat flap, retract the tail wheel and hook behind well sealed doors, and engineer the exhaust system for max thrust >250 mph. Just might get you there. A "Douglas Zero".But if an SBD could sometimes shoot down a Zero with a top speed of ~ 250 mph I would expect it would do better if it could make 300 mph, right?
They did do it on land though with regular artillery quite often, that is what the L4 was all about, and the Storch too to some extent. Risky job flying one of those but they were effective as artillery spotters and in observing troop movements.
The boomerang was a development of the Wirraway which in turn was a license built NA-16, not T-6. In fact I believe the T-6 was developed from the NA-16 as well. Splitting hairs I know but many seem to think the wirraway and T-6 are the same.Well, the Aussies did build a single seat T-6 with an R-1820, the Boomarang, armed the same as a Spitfire V. And it never shot down an enemy aircraft. They used to get P-39's to escort it on ground attack missions.
The Finns had the early F2A's, provided from US Navy stocks, not export models built to European standards. They lacked many of the weight adding upgrades of the later models.