The Dewoitine's canopy position is nearly the same as the F4U Corsair's(in relationship to the wing and forward fuselage). To be fair, that was a knock against the Corsair, but they figured it out...
I noticed the pic of the Fw-190 I posted on page 1 post #19 also has a taller tailwheel than the OTL FW, I think this is to give better clearance for the the torpedo but would this have also made the Fw-190 a decent carrier fighter?A simple trick was a longer / taller tailwheel. This had the effect of lowering the nose and improving forward visibility.
Thanks, it was just a rough concept. There are issues with it which I recognized as I was drawing it. The biggest is balance. Even with the wings so far forward I think the weight of the R-2800, its fluids, and the Cockpit/Pilot would make this thing pretty nose heavy. The solution, of course, would be to either switch the fuel tank and cockpit locations (moving the cockpit pretty far back a la F4U) or extend the tail and add some ballast (increasing overall weight but possibly fixing the instability and maybe even improving aerodynamics a bit by smoothing out the transition between the turbulent wake from the fuselage and the sounding air (although the prop wash will also affect this).Nice design. Definitely does not suck.
ETA The Douglas design, that is.
I agree that the R-2800 is the best option, overall, but with time constraints the R-2600 or a properly developed R-2180 will fit the bill very nicely.
We don't have to guess. We have Winkle's opinion.
He also said in a flyoff, the Spit IX would have a very hard time against the Hellcat, would have little problem vs a Me 109G-6, but would be evenly matched against a FW 190A-4
One easy way to improve the Wildcat is simply have the FM-2 variant ready to go in the timeframe of this threat.
For the British - what about a purpose built carrier variant of the Spitfire?
So original XF6F-1? It was OK'd on June 30 1941
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but didn't fly till a year later, and this prototype was re-engined with the R-2800 and designated the XF6F-3 and flown a month later. It crash landed in August '42, and re-engined yet again with a 2000HP Turbocharged R-2800 and now designated the XF6F-4
At this point in 1944 it was used to test 20mm cannon armament. The Prototype had a long, productive life.
Now some of the delay to the -1 first flight was tweaking the design to reflect what was discovered about the IJN Zero after Pearl Harbor. with the cockpit raised to a more hunchbacked look for better pilot visibility over the F4F, and adding 200 pounds of armor around the pilot.
even though it had a huge wing( for a fighter) at 42' span and 334sq.ft of area(larger than the twin engine XF5F), it retained excellent maneuverability and was a very stable gun platform