November 1, 1940 the War Department wakes up

Markus

Banned
Ahhh the magic P word. The programme you describe could be tacked on to the Hemisphere defence plan.

P-word??? Meaning what exactly?

@DuQuense:

I know that story and it has quite a few flaws.
1. They could have easily hit the Japanese bases on Formosa.
2. Sinking troopships on Dec- 8th is pointless. These ships carried minor advave units, the hammer did not fall until Dec.22nd.
3. And i´m not so sure Zeros with their not so accurate two 20mm guns will butcher B-17s. German pilots thought even four guns were not enough for a B-17.


A wank? A bit of one, sure, but it seems fairly plausable. Overall, we are talking about construction of about 600 aircraft, 70,000 rifles, 10,000 machine guns, and some common sense. The industrial output is already easily available, even without the extreme effort seen after the war started in ernest; ...


Who needs to make additional warplanes -or new ones- to have more in PH and the PI?
From August to November 1941 Bell delivered 612 P-39D. Ok, the plane was not as reliable as a P-40 and IMO never a good fighter, but good enough for certain purposes and by Dec 7th the AF had five pursuit groups equipped with Aircobras. Here we go:

200 or so of these short range interceptors are going to PH instead of Michigan and Louisiana. The 40 P-36 are send back to the States to be used as advanced trainers, the 90 P-40 with their better range are being send to the PI. Most of them are the partially proteced B´s, so let´s add three dozen E´s. That less than a seventh of Curtiss`s monthly production in September.

Result: 60% more fighters in PH, 120% more on the PI, with 0% increase in production.


About the "new" planes: One F4U was delivred in 1940, none in 1941 and a total of 179 in 1942, starting in July with 2 planes. It looks a bit lees bad in case of the P-47: ten in May 42, climbing to 61 in August and going into the triple digits(116) in November. Total deliveries for the year: 532 planes.
No way you can rush them into mass production soon enough to have combat ready units by Dec,7th 1941.
 
Production.

Could the FM2 Wildcat be bought forward, or at the least it's 1350hp engine in earlier Wildcats?
 

Markus

Banned
Production.

Could the FM2 Wildcat be bought forward, or at the least it's 1350hp engine in earlier Wildcats?

:confused: What about not installing two additional cal. 50 machine guns? A four gun configuration raises the ammo per gun from 240 to 450 rounds and saves 48 kilos/106lb. For comparison, an F4F-4 carried 160lb of armour. US carrier pilots did not like the additional weight and the reduced ammo supply.

And what about a different "old" airplane. The F2A-3 was just as fast as an F4F-4. The reason for it being dropped was the fuel tanks were so closely integrated into the wing beam structure that self-sealing protection could not be installed. Ok, I got carried away, if that is changed the Buffalo will stay in production, but it does not mean the USN/USMC get´s more of them before Dec.7th.

IMO the easiest way to get more planes to the future front is by withdrawing fighter squadrons from the continental USA.
 
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