Yes Britain wanted them to build P40's but North American said they could do better. 102 days after starting work they did.
F5F or F4F. Did the U.S. Navy make the right choice?
- Thread starter Draconis
- Start date
"First rule of Russian flying, what is behind me is not important!"
Movie-paraphrase
Randy
In context the assumed POD is that Grumman goes with the F5F instead of building the F3F for the Navy. (We're avoiding confusion because in such an ATL the F5F would instead be the F3F or maybe the F4F) So the F5F would have the same timeline as the F3F.
Randy
Driftless
Donor
"First rule of Russian flying, what is behind me is not important!"
Movie-paraphrase
Randy
Cheesy movie, but great fun anyway.
McPherson
Banned
"First rule of Russian flying, what is behind me is not important!"
Movie-paraphrase
Randy
How did he manage a hard right turn when his rudder was jammed left?
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Apparently a Condor hunter. But we'll never find a way to operate them off a MAC ship.
You just need to convert RMS Queen Elizabeth.
One of my absolute favorite comedy lines of all time...Cheesy movie, but great fun anyway.
It needed a little British wizardry to make P 51 just right though.
Dave Shoup
Banned
Understood, but historically it would have been challenging. Just based on a quick search of on-line sources, chronologically it looks unlikely.
The F3F contract was awarded in 1934, first flight in 1935, and it was operational in 1936; the G16 (the biplane competitor to the F2A) was on contract in 1936; the XF4F-2 (monoplane) was under development in 1936 and its first flight was in 1937, with active service in combat in 1940.
The XF5F was on contract in 1938, with its first flight in 1940; given a similar path as the F4F, a guess is active service in 1942. The related XP-50's first flight was in 1941, so active service maybe in 1943...
Given the above, the F4F was a much better choice.
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Dave Shoup
Banned
True, but even with an Allison, a P-51A or A-36A was a pretty impressive combat aircraft anywhere between the deck and 15,000 feet.
And making 3000 F4F so the brits could standardise on the type as well? Maybe overkill in numbers but still probably better value for money than 1500 F5F.
I suppose the simplest and most effective way to get F6F Hellcat performance earlier than OTL is not to build the F5F with its two F4F engines but to build the F6F Hellcat earlier. But that means getting the PW R-2800 version for fighters available earlier. How to accomplish that? That shouldn't be so hard to do. The engine was first run back in 1937.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pratt_&_Whitney_R-2800_Double_Wasp
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pratt_&_Whitney_R-2800_Double_Wasp
The XF4U-1 1st flew at 29th May 1940, engine was the (X)R-2800-4 (A series, 2-stage supercharger for plenty of hi-alt power). So I'd also second the 'no F5F, early F6F' proposal.
(Vought, P&W and Hamilton Standard were part of the same parent company)
marathag
Banned
So was the Wright R-3550.
Would be embarrassing to plan around an engine that never worked out, as the US found with the various aircraft that were to use the Hyper-line of engines.
No guarantee that the R-2800 would turn out like OTL, that's why the plans for using two engines to get that level of power, since R-1830s or R-1820s were already flying aircraft
Wisely keeping their options open. And they're some advantages to having two engines on a fighter. Since we can't actually view alternate realities the next best thing would be running a very sophisticated war game simulator where the F4F is replaced with realistically nonwankish appropriate to the situation number of F5Fs and then can we analyse the results to see if it would have been a better choice or not.
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