Elvis
Chief Master Sergeant
+1.Rather than the worst I think it could be classed as one of the best aircraft of the period. Many still airworthy today.
Couldn't have said it better myself.
Elvis
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+1.Rather than the worst I think it could be classed as one of the best aircraft of the period. Many still airworthy today.
No, you are right. I can see what you are saying. the losses of the Devastator are not a sign that the plane itself was bad
The Devastator actually did well in the Battle of Coral Sea where it did help sink the Shoho. There was no doubt the aircraft was obsolete but the losses at Midway were also due to a tactical situation - the whole Japanese carrier task force fighter CAP converged on the unescorted Devastators. The TBD attack was planned with the assumption that these aircraft would of had fighter protection during their torpedo runs. Cmdr Thach and his fighters never rendezvous with the TBDs and their fate was sealed. Their sacrifice was not in vain however, as their attack not only forced the Japanese to delay launching their strike force, but also drew the defending fighters down to low altitudes, allowing the later arriving dive bombers, to attack without opposition and sink three carriers.The losses of the Devastator were a sign that the plane was old.
Fast, sleek and with a number of features considered modern for 1935, monoplane structure, hydraulic wing-fold mechanism, all-metal construction.
1940 arrived and with the new decade came the inevitability that the TBD was losing its edge, the US Navy did set about looking for a replacement but in all honesty, without any real sense of urgency - rather scary considering the wars that were brewing in Europe and Asia; the TBD was state of the art 5 years ago, it will be now... right?
Wrong. Things had moved on. Considerably. The TBD was by now under-protected, under-powered and asked crews to deliver a torpedo that seemed to have a lot of trouble going off once it hit the target, that is IF it hit the target and didn't plough 11 - 14 feet under it as the test warhead used in trials was nowhere near as heavy as the real warhead carried on operations.
US Navy intransigence can certainly carry the can for most of the shortcomings of their own strike capability but trying to preserve the reputation of a platform on the basis that it was a little long in the tooth before it came to be used in anger is misguided; if the plane carrying you into battle is no longer up to the task then it's a bad plane.
It's also going to get you shot down, in the same way that over 90% of the TBD force deployed at Midway were.
The losses of the Devastator were a sign that the plane was old.
I'm sure there's an argument for Swordfish and Barracuda crews wanting them in preference but that wasn't really the question.
Old doesn't equal bad, what we are talking about are the worst aeroplanes of WW2...
...I would say that any 'worst' aircraft would have to be one that was dangerous to its crews because it was a badly flawed design, not because people were shooting at it.
Did you fly C-46s or just fly in them because I've heard just the opposite.It surely had some fine qualities that are easy to overlook, but those of us who had to fly in them thought the Curtiss C46 was the most unstable aircraft in the world, especially on base leg and final approach, when the flaps went down.
I'm gonna have to go with the Brewster Buffalo. I know that the Finn's had a lot of success with them against Russia, but everywhere else they were literally coffins for their pilots. The losses that they suffered at Midway kinda prove it (though experience between the Japanese and American pilots was also a pivoting factor). I even heard that the Brewster Company went bankrupt during the war too.
The buffalo was actually quite a good aircraft. Most of it's pilots were inexperienced (see KNIL) pilots, hence the losses. The Zero was simply better at the time, although I read a report of a Dutch KNIL pilot who stated that the B339 was as good as the Zero.
The British version (and the later US for that matter) had added armour which made the a/c simply too heavy.