Any thoughts on Naval Aviation as used by the U.S. in this timeline? I'm thinking that the analogs to the PBY Catalina and the PBB-1 Sea Ranger (the best flying boat OTL that the Navy never had, IMHO), would be in service. For carrier-based air, the F4F Wildcat, SBD Dauntless, and maybe the TBD would be in use at the start of the war, with the Hellcat and Helldiver (SB2C) getting in as the war progresses, with a toss-up between the TBF Avenger and the TBY Seawolf as the TBD replacement.
Ship-based or land-based floatplanes would include the OS2U Kingfisher, the SOC Seagull, and possibly the Northrop N-3PB (which never saw USN use OTL, but was used by a Norwegian squadron in the RAF) Land-based Naval Air might include the PB4Y-1 Liberator and the PB4Y-2 Privateer later on.
Comments?
One of the differences in general American military aviation I expect in TL-191 is that the OTL Wright-Curtiss dispute about patent rights will get resolved a lot faster than IOTL--so the US will not lag behind the nations of Europe in airplane
production the way it did IOTL. Combined with still having most of the same talent in aircraft
design, I expect the US to be an aeronautical powerhouse in the Great War--the US Army and Navy will quickly understand the utility of scout planes. Of course, the breakdown of the OTL market when wartime surplus planes were dumped in large numbers will still occur ITTL--so a lot of companies will fall on hard times, though not to the OTL degree.
And a lot of the big Naval Aviation companies should exist with only minor butterfly differences from OTL--Vought, Grumman, Brewster all got their start on Long Island, as did Curtiss, so they should still exist ITTL. The exceptions will be Republic Aviation (Seversky, Kartveli, and company will remain in Russia or settle in France or Britain rather than the US--or maybe CSA?) and Sikorsky (same story). Those won't exist in any recognizable form (unless one wants to postulate Confederate Thunderbolts).
The US Navy has two main goals prior to the Great War--blockading the CSA and interdicting British trade in the Pacific and Atlantic. Curtiss was the early pioneer in American flying boats--I expect that to still be the case ITTL. Another early innovator was Grover Loening--whose Loening Aeronautical Engineering was IOTL bought out by Keystone, but a lot of whose engineers stayed in Long Island to form Grumman Aircraft. Since the TTL Navy is probably buying more floatplanes (the TTL US is not demilitarizing to the OTL degree, and probably buys more during its longer involvement in the Great War), maybe Loening stays around--and the planes we know as Grumman products are instead Loenings. Under the OTL US Navy aircraft designation system, their letter is L--so you'd see a *Wildcat named "F4L."
Post-war, the US has the Sandwich Islands, and the Bahamas. Those will be bases for seaplanes and long-range land-based bombers--something analogous to the OTL schemes to fly B-17s out of the Philippines. Boeing is known to exist in TL-191, so maybe the planes are
literally B-17s (there will be disputes between the Army and Navy as to whose planes they are, but since the purpose in the Sandwich Islands is to sink RN and IJN ships and the purpose in the Bahamas is to attack Confederate ports and shipping, I actually expect these to be US Navy planes--designation something like "B5B." There will be seaplanes for things like pilot rescue and running guns to black guerillas--something like the Catalina. The harsh reality of long-duration warfare and the Navy's need to maintain a presence despite Socialist budget-cutting might make Admirals more open to air power--for that matter, the Socialists might even get behind Naval aviation precisely because it's cheaper than a battleship fleet.
The RN is still a threat, so there will be a significant force of torpedo bombers and carrier-based fighters--if Loening is as good as OTL Grumman at selling to the Navy, Avenger- and Hellcat-like planes will be prominent there.
The remaining question is how much influence German designers have on the US, and vice-versa. Given the OTL US lead in aircraft design, I want to say that I actually expect to see lots of Loening and Vought and Curtiss planes built under license flying in the Kaiser's military--but who knows where the Germans would go ITTL?
Another complicating factor is that, per the Turtledovism that war
accelerates technological advancement, the entire world seems a little ahead of OTL as of 1944--with atomic bombs developed by IIRC 4 different countries and jet-powered fighters in frontline service in the US in 1944 (and the US was not as desperate as OTL Nazi Germany, so the design must have been a lot more mature than the OTL Me 262). So I'd counter the above point about the US being weaker by noting that technology seems no worse for it.
As a side note, I actually expect the US Navy to use 88mm guns for antiaircraft once the Great War breaks out--there was no OTL 90mm-class gun in American use, while the 88mm was an antiaircraft gun in the Kaiser's navy, so I expect the US would just buy a license and clone it rather than build new tooling.
Returning for a moment to the question of Seversky and Sikorsky, I actually could imagine them settling in the CS when Russia falls into civil war--and Featherston might be enthusiastic about ultra-fast fighters as a propaganda measure, so Seversky might appeal to him. So I actually could imagine the United Orange Company of Florida buying planes that look suspiciously like P-47s.