Worst Possible WW2 single engine carrier fighter.

Once again the subject of German carriers has reared its ugly head, which set me to thinking. Was there a single engine fighter in World War 2 that would have been less suited to carrier operations than the Bf109T?

It suffered from:

• weak undercarriage
• ground handling issues due to the splayed legs and toe in on the wheels
• appalling visibility from the cockpit due to the heavy framing of the canopy and the fact that it was impossible to open the canopy in flight.
• short legs it inherited from the 109E. It had a range of just over 400 miles on internal fuel, with no allowance for combat

The only pluses I can see are that basic servicing should be nice and easy as it was with all 109s, and you can remove the wings and it will still sit on its undercarriage.


So, was there a worse option amongst the panoply of WW2 single engined fighters?

How about the Roc?

Wow, Astrodragon bet me by a minute - but he didn"t thought about floats.

Blackburn Roc - with floats. More drag than aircraft there...

Very few land based fighters will be able to perform well on a carrier. Adjusting any existing land design for carrier use will always be sub-optimal. If you are serious about carrier operations, you need to design planes for that role if you want anything decent.

The Germans came late to aircraft carriers and kept shelving the project. Of course their planes won't be good.

Astrodragon said:

How about the Roc?

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It's a possibility due to its performance, but in terms of its ability to deal with ship board life the Skua/Roc was miles ahead of the 109. Surely it's better to have ten serviceable Rocs than no serviceable 109s because you've run out of undercarriage legs.

And the Skua could look after itself to some extent.

Quoting from Skuas And Rocs Over Dunkirk:

"On the 31st May ten Albacores and nine Skuas bombed German pontoon bridges over the Nieuport Canal, near the coast North East of Dunkirk. Direct hits were claimed. Returning home the Skuas were engaged by 12 Messerschmitt Bf 109s of I/JG20 and two Skuas of 801 Squadron (L2917 and L3005) were shot down. Another Skua crash landed back at Detling. The battle was not all one sided, the Skuas claimed one Bf109 shot down and another damaged. It seems the Messeschmitts may have broken off the chase to go after three Coastal Command Hudsons, who in turn escaped claiming another Bf109 shot down. The Skua that crash-landed back at Detling is probably the one described in Capt Eric Brown's "Wings of the Navy" and Alexander McKee's "Strike from the Sky", as providing an example of the Skua's sturdiness, with nine bullet holes in one propeller blade alone, the top cylinder of the Perseus engine shot away, along with the pilot's windscreen and canopy"

http://freespace.virgin.net/john.dell/Dunkirk.htm

Pretty much anything with the Sabre engine...

Take off would be OK, but how many would last long enough to land on again?

Astrodragon said:

Pretty much anything with the Sabre engine...

Take off would be OK, but how many would last long enough to land on again?

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The FAA actually looked at the Typhoon as a carrier fighter and came to the not altogether surprising conclusion that it was a bad idea.

oldironside said:

The FAA actually looked at the Typhoon as a carrier fighter and came to the not altogether surprising conclusion that it was a bad idea.

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Typhoon and sarbe engine had its faults, but Hawker amended them methodically. In its most produced versions Typhoon was good multiirole fighter. What could be wrong with that?

Edit:
my entry to the contest.
Fulmar

Insider said:

Typhoon and sarbe engine had its faults, but Hawker amended them methodically. In its most produced versions Typhoon was good multiirole fighter. What could be wrong with that?

Edit:
my entry to the contest.
Fulmar

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Well, I've just been over to the warships1 discussion boards, and there are a couple of quotes that might be relevant.

"At Boscombe Down in 1941 a naval pilot testing the Typhoon reported that it would be difficult to operate from a carrier because of its long take-off run, high stall speed and poor view; it was not nearly as controllable as a Seafire at stall speed."

"Winkle Brown called the idea of regularly flying over water with a Sabre engine "terrifying"."

And something I didn't know. There was apparently a plan for a Sea Typhoon with enlarged wings and increased fuel tankage, but which only had 30% parts commonality with the original. I'll have to check that out further.

You can read the whole thread here.
http://warships1discussionboards.yu...oon-have-been-a-disaster-for-FAA#.VZWITEbLLjc

As for the Fulmar, it was a delight to fly at low speed, had an incredibly wide tracked undercarriage and a decent range. Again, better ten serviceable Fulmars than...

Insider said:

my entry to the contest.
Fulmar

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Fairly well armed (for 1940); decent range; a bit on the slow side; did well enough against Italian and German aircraft in the Med; 40 combat losses, only 16 believed to be to enemy aircraft vs 112-122 kills (depending on source)...

Sure, the perceived need for twin seater fighters proved to be wrong and a Sea Hurricane or Seafire one to two years early would have been better, but I don't the Fulmar qualifies as the worst possible carrier based fighter.

Insider said:

Typhoon and sarbe engine had its faults, but Hawker amended them methodically. In its most produced versions Typhoon was good multiirole fighter. What could be wrong with that?

Edit:
my entry to the contest.
Fulmar

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The Fulmar did the job that was asked of it and served well in the first 2 years of the war.

Long ranged, 8 Machine guns (at a time when most other fighters had 2 or 4) - it was available, was capable and did the job.

At the same time the IJN was using the A5M the USN was using the F2F and F3F - the Germans would have been using a HE 51 or Arado AR 68.

At least the 109T would have been able to survive combat (landing, not so sure ).

You have to go a way to beat F2A Buffalo in carrier trim. While it had a degree of success in a shore based role, especially with the Finnish Air Force, with the additional weight needed to deck qualify it was a pure death trap. After Midway one of the Marine VFM commanders states "A commander sending a F2A into combat should consider it lost the moment it leaves the ground".

Cryhavoc101 said:

At the same time the IJN was using the A5M the USN was using the F2F and F3F - the Germans would have been using a HE 51 or Arado AR 68.

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... or cannibalising 10 very battered 109Ts trying to make one good one.

As an aside, I've always had a soft spot for the A5M. It's the archetypal 1930s fixed undercarriage monoplane.

CalBear said:

At least the 109T would have been able to survive combat (landing, not so sure ).

You have to go a way to beat F2A Buffalo in carrier trim. While it had a degree of success in a shore based role, especially with the Finnish Air Force, with the additional weight needed to deck qualify it was a pure death trap. After Midway one of the Marine VFM commanders states "A commander sending a F2A into combat should consider it lost the moment it leaves the ground".

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Pretty much agree on the carrier trim Buffalo. It was massively overweight and even if it survived combat it still had issues with the undercarriage.

My point is that any carrier trying to break out from the North Sea into the Atlantic would need to operate a permanent CAP. Constant take off/landing cycles there would lead to a high attrition rate. I'm not totally convinced there would have been any left after two or three days of operations in anything other thann perfect weather conditions. And the GZ only carried ten 109Ts.

Did the french ever think of a D520 on a carrier?

i cant imagine there are many fighters that seem to have a longer nose than that, visibility would have been a pig out of the front

Scotty said:

Did the french ever think of a D520 on a carrier?

i cant imagine there are many fighters that seem to have a longer nose than that, visibility would have been a pig out of the front

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I believe that French pilots adopted a side slip landing technique to allow themselves to see past the nose. This was possible becuase the D520 had a sliding canopy (and a rather generous one at that). It also didn't suffer from the 109's undercarriage problem.



I still think this was better bet than the 109.

oldironside said:

... or cannibalising 10 very battered 109Ts trying to make one good one.

As an aside, I've always had a soft spot for the A5M. It's the archetypal 1930s fixed undercarriage monoplane.

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Slow, but it would turn on a dime and give you nine cents change.

oldironside said:

I believe that French pilots adopted a side slip landing technique to allow themselves to see past the nose. This was possible becuase the D520 had a sliding canopy (and a rather generous one at that). It also didn't suffer from the 109's undercarriage problem.

I still think this was better bet than the 109.

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The French apparently did some design work on a carrier version (model D.790), but none built.

Here's a WHIF modelers take on the concept:

CalBear said:

Slow, but it would turn on a dime and give you nine cents change.

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Forgive me, but I'm going to steal that phrase (after suitably anglicising it).

"Slow, but it would turn on a sixpence and still give you twenty three farthings change."

I may have that wrong. I never learnt pre-decimal coinage.

How about the F-35...