Wildcats in action in Europe 1945

Greg Boeser said:

Die Experten in the Luftwaffe flying 109s made do with twin lmgs and a 20mm. Good enough for taking down fighters and light bombers, but inadequate for mediums and heavies.

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Might not have worked on the American aircraft either at least some of them.

A P-47 weighed as much as an Bf 110. Likewise the P-38. Plenty were shot down by lightly armed 109s but certainly not as many as the Luftwaffe hoped.

And here again we run into time and general trends. If you design a fighter to dive at 400mph for example you design the wing to have certain amount of strength. If you design it to dive at 500mph you need to design it to be over 50% stronger just to resist the flight loads.
Later aircraft grew in strength just to handle the flight loads which did help them survive damage (at times).

And again you have the problem of designing for your Experten vs your average pilot who needs all the help he can get. At least until he lasts long enough to get some experience.

British were hanging 4 guns and occasionally 6 on a few fighters in WW I, unfortunately after WW I they reverted back to two guns (cheap in peace time) or be told "if was good enough for Bishop it should be good enough for you lot"

An interesting factoid about gun harmonization:

The positioning of the armament in the wings of most fighters designed
after 1936, as opposed to the fuselage installations enjoyed from 1916 to
1936, brought the need for accurate alignment of guns with the sight. In
most cases, the wing guns were 'toed-in' to converge at a point ahead of
the aircraft, within the range of the guns - 250 yards in the case of the
0.303 in Browning, for example. In late 1940, not entirely satisfied with the
results of convergent alignment, the Royal Navy devised a pattern intended
to fill a volume of air with as many bullets as possible, as opposed to
trying to hit a single point with all the bullets. The results were remarkable.
In 1941, Fulmars fitted with the two harmonisation systems destroyed
similar numbers of enemy aircraft (35), but only three fighters with the
'Admiralty Standard Harmonisation' were shot down by return fire,
in contrast with eleven whose guns were aligned to a point, and which
had apparently had to close to short range to score their kills. (Carrier Fighters)

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Greg Boeser said:

Die Experten in the Luftwaffe flying 109s made do with twin lmgs and a 20mm. Good enough for taking down fighters and light bombers, but inadequate for mediums and heavies.

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or twin LMG and a 15mm in the 109F-2

Clayton Magnet said:

I wonder if he was mistaken on the Wildcat model he transitioned into, and instead of the Wildcat IV, perhaps it was the VI?. The Martlet IV was a fairly ponderous performer, and though it was an undoubtedly better deck handling aircraft than a Sea Hurricane, I don't think it significantly outperformed it., as stated in the article.

" By late 1944, 835 NAS was due to be re-equipped with the much more capable American fighter, the Grumman Wildcat IV, which was purpose-built and carrier-borne. It was more manoeuvrable and had a better rate of climb and endurance than the Sea Hurricane, and had been designed for seaborne operations with its powered, folding wings."

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Wildcat does not have powered folding wing. You just swing it back and forth by hand (I did it numerous times).

Hey WAFU,

re "The Sea Hurricane suffered terribly from deterioration as it wasn't designed as a naval fighter.
any performance figures quickly went south once they started getting soaked with sea water on a constant basis."

I think you misunderstand the effects of sea-water (salt-water) on aircraft. The sea-water would not have affected the performance to any significant degree. It could, however, significantly affect the service life and maintenance needs of an aircraft. I should say, however, that I have not read of any significant effects of the at-sea operating conditions on the SeaHurricane. (I am not saying that there were none, just that I have not run across any. If you have run across references to such I would very much appreciate your posting them - or links to them. The Hurricane is one of my favorite WWII aircraft. )

ThomasP said:

Hey WAFU,

re "The Sea Hurricane suffered terribly from deterioration as it wasn't designed as a naval fighter.
any performance figures quickly went south once they started getting soaked with sea water on a constant basis."

I think you misunderstand the effects of sea-water (salt-water) on aircraft. The sea-water would not have affected the performance to any significant degree. It could, however, significantly affect the service life and maintenance needs of an aircraft. I should say, however, that I have not read of any significant effects of the at-sea operating conditions on the SeaHurricane. (I am not saying that there were none, just that I have not run across any. If you have run across references to such I would very much appreciate your posting them - or links to them. The Hurricane is one of my favorite WWII aircraft. )

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Th SH1A was exposed to the elements for weeks at a time on catapult equipped merchant ships (CAM Ships), and I haven't found accounts of these aircraft suffering unduly from exposure to the salt water.

Shortround6 said:

British were hanging 4 guns and occasionally 6 on a few fighters in WW I, unfortunately after WW I they reverted back to two guns (cheap in peace time) or be told "if was good enough for Bishop it should be good enough for you lot"

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Hi
As did everyone else, so why single out the British? Indeed the Japanese introduced their Ki-43 with twin .303s in 1940!
The problem with multi-gun fighters were that they really needed to be near the pilot so jams could be cleared (common to every side in WW1, even MvR had to leave fights to clear jams) despite various measures taken to reduce this (eg. selection of ammunition, replacement of canvas belts by metal links etc). Also the increased weight of multi-gun armament would also reduce the performance of the aeroplane to some extent. Multi-gun fighters with guns in wings needed to have more reliable weapons to be effective, some Sopwith Dolphins during WW1 were fitted with a Lewis Gun in each wing, however, they only had 97 rounds in each magazine which could not be reloaded and the pilot could not deal with jams.
I would suggest, if you can get hold of a copy, read Chapter 5, 'The Quest for Fighter Firepower' in Colin Sinnott's 'The Royal Air Force and Aircraft Design 1923-1939' (the whole book can be quite informative), which covers the evolution of multi-gun fighters, he suggests that the RAF was not behind other countries. Some extracts from the chapter below, but reading the whole chapter would be best:




Mike

The issues I'm aware of with the Sea Hurricane are that 1) many of the first batch were converted from somewhat 'clapped out' land based Hurricanes which had already degraded in speed and performance and a had a large number of severe maintenance issues (there is a lot of commentary by RN officers about this on 'steelcarriers') and 2) apparently Hurricanes in general sometimes had performance issues in Tropical climates, aside from any specific problems with the Vokes filter.

Exposure to seawater will degrade the metals on aircraft over time, though I haven't read anything specificially about that vis a vis "Sea Hurricanes"

MikeMeech said:

Hi
As did everyone else, so why single out the British? Indeed the Japanese introduced their Ki-43 with twin .303s in 1940!

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Indeed. For the biplane fighters of the interwar period, paired LMGs were the default armament. Even in the monoplane fighters of the early to mid 1930s, paired LMGs were still the most common armament configuration.

By the mid to late 1930s, as engines got more powerful and fighters and bombers grew substantially in weight, there was a move to arm aircraft more heavily. Initially, this was done by adding more LMGs or opting for a single LMG/single HMG combination.

HMGs and light cannon weren't really a common armament until 1937 or later.

The Sopwith Snark was designed for 6 guns, two Vickers in the fuselage and two Lewis guns under the bottom wing. Hatches/doors were built into the wing so the drums could loaded from the top and perhaps recess the drums a bit. Unfortunately it was designed to use the ABC Dragonfly engine and like every other plane that came with spitting distance of that engine it was doomed. 3 were ordered but perhaps only one was completed.
It took a while for a decent 300plus hp engine to show up after the war. A while being a couple of years.
The Sopwith Dolphin was somewhat different, it had 4 guns but only 2 could point at the target at the same time.

The Lewis guns could not be synchronized. Over 2000 built (?) but around 1500 were never fitted with engines (?).

The French were fooling around with a 37mm gun fired through the prop shaft of the Hispano V-8 engine. a few pilots had occasional successes with it. However it was pretty much the standard 37mm trench gun

So the pilot had to hand feed the shells in one at a time and with the weight of the cannon the planes were limited to either one MG or none.

I am singling out the British because in 1918 the US were lucky they could even build a few score of S.E. 5s with down rated engines to use as advanced trainers. It took a few years to catch the rest of the world. 1919 The Germans were banned from building aircraft so no advances there. Running out of countries lead the way with more than 2 guns, You do need more than 1918 standard engines.

The 20mm automatic cannon got a fair amount of interest during the 20s but it took a while to get the gun/s up to the level that anybody really wanted to use them.
Weight and rate of fire/ammo capacity were problems.

The British did leap frog from 2 guns to eight but that was partially because the entire class of 1930 was doomed by the Goshawk engine.

Most/all (?) of the class of 1930 (flying in 1933/34) had 4 guns, but none went into service.
By this time the US had saddled itself with the .50 cal mg and it's "standard" armament of one .50 and one .30 weighed somewhere between 3 and 4 regular machine guns. Actual effectiveness was subject to question. Some planes were flying with two .30s.

The French had standardized on the 20mm cannon and two MGs in 1934 or so with Dewoitine 501/510

The Italians also started using 2 HMGs in the late 30s, however poor they were, they hit harder than a 7.62mm. The Soviets were putting four ultra fast firing .30 cal ShKAS in their I-16 /10 by 1936 or 37, and put in a pair of 20mm cannon in their I-16-12s and later by 1938.

The He 112 (I think 1936?) had two 20mm cannon.

ThomasP said:

re the white paint scheme on the F4F

I have seen a colour picture of the SeaHurricane (in the FAA's white scheme) somewhere on the internet. Otherwise there are several B&W photos of the SeaHurricanes in the white scheme.

I do not know if the scheme is the same as used on the Wildcat.

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It doesn't appear so...

Shortround6 said:

The French had standardized on the 20mm cannon and two MGs in 1934 or so with Dewoitine 501/510

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This is getting way off topic, but the D.510 first flew with a 20mm cannon in December of 1934. First order by the French Air Force was in mid 1935 and first delivery was in October 1936.

Interestingly, one D.510 was exported to the Soviet Union. A couple of years later, the Yak-1 and LaGG-1 show up with motor cannons (using an engine derived from the HS 12Y)

Wild_Bill_Kelso said:

The Italians also started using 2 HMGs in the late 30s, however poor they were, they hit harder than a 7.62mm.

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The 12.7mm Breda-SAFAT could potentially lay a claim to being the best aerial HMGs in the world when it entered service in 1936. Probably because it was one of a bare few HMGs in service in 1936.

When you compare it to later guns that saw service in WW2, it's no great shake. Pretty much everything else outclasses it (particularly given the Italian propensity to stick it in nose mounts).

However, if you compare it to the M2 Browning of pre 1940 vintage:

It's lighter. Installed weight of roughly 29 kg vs 37 kg for the unlightened version of the M2
It's faster firing. Rate of fire was 700 rpm free firing and 575 rpm when synchronized. In RAF testing in 1935, the M2 was running at around 500-750 rpm cyclic, with an average of about 600 rpm. It really didn't like being syncronized and rate of fire fell to about 425-500 rpm when it was.
It's just as reliable (if not more so). In fuselage and wing mountings the Breda-Safat in 12.7mm was reputedly even more reliable than it's little brother in 7.7mm. In contrast, it wasn't until well into 1942 that the US had fully sorted the M2's installation and ammunition feed woes (see the issues with the P-51).
It has a very similar muzzle velocity. The 12.7X81 ammunition had a muzzle velocity between about 750 mps and 771 mps. In comparison, M1 ball ammunition of 1938 vintage was travelling at 2500fps/762mps and M1 AP was travelling at 2590fps/789mps.

The big let down is in the ammunition. The M2 rounds weighed about to 46 to 52 grams, vs 32 to 38.5 grams in the Breda-Safat. Once more modern rounds like the M2 Ball, M2 AP and M8 API, which had substantially higher velocities and better ballistic shapes, came into service, the Breda really starts to get outclassed.