I wasn't thinking that far ahead, so yeah, there's probably a fuselage redesign going to happen, which implies to me that you're getting close to clean-sheet territory. Am I understanding you right about this?
Yes, after you redesign the fuselage shorter - as it no longer needs to house the turret, and you redesign the wing - as it can be smaller as the plane is lighter without turret/second crew member, you're getting close to clean-sheet territory.
I am not sure I understand your point here. I mean, I get cancelling an airplane that won't see war before it's over (though I'm pretty sure Seafires went into service after WWII) seems reasonable, your first sentence is incomplete. "While thanking you for spending FAA £'s", what? The sentence has a subject but no object, so I can't see where your point is going.
I'm not trying to grammatik you, I honestly don't understand where you were going with that.
Churchill canceled the FAA's late '39/early '40 request for Seafires. At the time, the RAF was wanting every single engine single seat monoplane fighter they could lay their hands on. If the RN had paid Supermarine (or Fairey under subcontract) to build Seafires, at the end of the production line, the RAF would have claimed the airplanes for 'homeland defense'. While I know
Clayton Magnet
was being small aleck about the Sea Fury, had Hawker (or Miles, etc) produced a radial engined single seat monoplane competitive with the Hurricane/Spitfire, the RAF would have commandeered them as well. Stopping the Germans at the Channel was more important than putting a state of the art fighter on a RN carrier.
So, if FAA had been allowed to order Seafires in late '39/early '40 for all the £'s from the RN budget spent, they would have nothing to show for it. In fact they would be worse than IOT, as they wouldn't even have Fulmars. The "advantage" of the Fulmar for the FAA - the RAF doesn't want them...
And it doesn't change until Spring '42 - the Soviets hadn't collapsed over winter '41/USA is now into the war.
So, the challenge is really - to design/build a plane which is competitive, but has some trait (e.g. second crew member) that makes it undesirable to the RAF.
In 1942, there were the two best carrier fighters -- in order (imo), the Zero and the F4F -- and then there was everything else. And yes, operating off of grass for the F4F was squiggly, what with narrow-track gear and stubby frame that only accentuated that problem with its shorter wheelbase. The Zero was handier in that regard.
Eric Brown liked the Grumman, and iirc shot down one (or was it two?) FW-200s with it, even as he noted the deck-handling issues.
'42 is 3 years too late for the RN...the war starts in '39.
Was that clearer?