STEN fighter plane?

I would mention parasite drag and vortex drag, but that really would be a drag.

The placement of the Mustang coolant matrix was less important that its entire format and Meredith effect treatment. The supercharger air intake and mainwheel doors operation were a factor in rad efficiency. Seafire 47 incorporated a Mustang-like intake for supercharger air, with a reduction in engine efficiency over Seafire 46, which did not.
 

Archibald

Banned
The 'creation of any new types of aircraft' was not banned for the Curtiss. They were trying with XP-46, XP-55, XP-53 and P-60 series, SC floatplane fighters (okay, for UNS needs) plus a host of other non-fighters, like the C-46 or SB2C. Let's not forget that Curtiss have had the contract for production of P-47 as early as january of 1942, that they bothched up instead of earning money, unlike the other two factories producing it.
Nobody was stopping Curtiss paying top dollar to the engineers once they secured contracts with US Army, France and UK for P-40s - yet another self-inflicted wound?



Tough luck? IMO Curtiss does not have anyone to blame for the lack of commercial succes in the second part of the war but themselves. After P-40, and apart the C-46 and SC, they managed to come out with half a dozen under-performers.



The supposed 1930s machine tooling was churning out, monthly, hundreds of P-40s for several years once the ball started rolling, eg in January 1942 they delivered 317 P-40s. NAA with P-51 1st beat the 300 pcs mark (monthly) in Dec 1943, with two production sources vs. P-40s one.

My point exactly. Curtiss lost their soul during WWII, mostly because of self-inflicted wounds.
 
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