renrich
Chief Master Sergeant
Regarding the debates by all of us" experts" about performance charts and combat effectiveness of our various favorite. airplanes, I have a comment and question. I recently read an article which was about a gentleman who headed up the business of selecting firearms for the US Army prior to the War of Northern Aggression. As we all know both army's infantry were armed for the most part with similar weapons. They were a percussion 50 cal or so muzzle loading rifled musket which was effective out to maybe 500 or 600 yards. One reason that the Henry and Spencer rifles were not widely used or thought to be effective was that they did not have the killing power at long ranges of the rifled musket. The article stated that a recent study showed that the average range of an infantry engagement during that unfortunate war was 127 yards. Hmmmmm?
Following that line of thought I believe it would be extremely interesting if it was possible to know at what altitude and at what average speeds the typical engagement between two fighters took place in the ETO and the PTO during WW2. My bet would be that the speeds and altitudes both would be much lower than most of us think. No where near the Vmax or service ceiling of the aircraft involved. There is a story about a mission, Ira Kepford flew in the Pacific in his Corsair. He got caught on the deck by several Zekes diving on him. He managed to force one into an overshoot and shot him down and then used WEP to get out in front with a little lead but when the water ran out he could do little more than stay in front of the pursuing Zekes while on the deck. If the Zeke was as slow as mentioned down low and the Corsair had a big advantage as all the performance numbers tell us, what is going on?
Regarding the paddle blade prop on the Corsair, I don't doubt that the props on the various Corsair models were different than that on the prototype, because the Hamilton Standard prop on the prototype was under development when the XFU first flew as well as the R2800. However in Dean's book he goes out of his way to mention the paddle blade prop on the P47s in the captions under the numerous pictures and it is possible to look at the photos and see the differences in the Hamilton and the Curtis props. All the Corsair props(except when the four blade prop of the F4U4 was introduced) look alike in the photos and Dean never mentions a paddle bladed prop for the Corsair. In fact there was a discussion about the paddle blade and the P47 and why the Corsair with the same engine did not use one earlier on this forum. Maybe the Corsair got one and it did not have the same impact for it that the P47 prop did?
Following that line of thought I believe it would be extremely interesting if it was possible to know at what altitude and at what average speeds the typical engagement between two fighters took place in the ETO and the PTO during WW2. My bet would be that the speeds and altitudes both would be much lower than most of us think. No where near the Vmax or service ceiling of the aircraft involved. There is a story about a mission, Ira Kepford flew in the Pacific in his Corsair. He got caught on the deck by several Zekes diving on him. He managed to force one into an overshoot and shot him down and then used WEP to get out in front with a little lead but when the water ran out he could do little more than stay in front of the pursuing Zekes while on the deck. If the Zeke was as slow as mentioned down low and the Corsair had a big advantage as all the performance numbers tell us, what is going on?
Regarding the paddle blade prop on the Corsair, I don't doubt that the props on the various Corsair models were different than that on the prototype, because the Hamilton Standard prop on the prototype was under development when the XFU first flew as well as the R2800. However in Dean's book he goes out of his way to mention the paddle blade prop on the P47s in the captions under the numerous pictures and it is possible to look at the photos and see the differences in the Hamilton and the Curtis props. All the Corsair props(except when the four blade prop of the F4U4 was introduced) look alike in the photos and Dean never mentions a paddle bladed prop for the Corsair. In fact there was a discussion about the paddle blade and the P47 and why the Corsair with the same engine did not use one earlier on this forum. Maybe the Corsair got one and it did not have the same impact for it that the P47 prop did?