Vought V-141 or Vultee P-66

MatthewB

Banned
What was worse, the Vought V-141 or the Vultee P-66? The Vought V-141 was sold to Japan, but found wanting. Vultee sold the P-66 Vanguard to Britain but was found wanting by the RAF.
 
One of these got produced, the other did not. Of the two, the Vought's landing gear design was copied rivet for rivet by the IJAAS and IJN; whilst the Vanguard was produced and eventually just offloaded onto the Republic of China where it served with... mixed results, really. Better or worse is answered pretty simply; the Vanguard is better simply because it has y'know, results.
 
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Vought V-141 was worse. It was based on a design that Northrup never de-bugged. That short aft fuselage looks like it was designed by a structural engineer obsessed with minimizing weight and cost. Too bad his “savings” cost some serious spin recovery problems.

Pilatus’ second trainer suffered similar problems that were only solved after extensive test-flying plus the addition of more fins and strakes than most of us can count.

OTOH Vultee Vanguard was a decent light fighter based upon the proven Vultee BT-13 trainer. It’s biggest disadvantage was that the entire class of light-weight fighters was out-classed by 1940.
 

MatthewB

Banned
It’s good that Vought redeemed itself with the Corsair. Did Vultee ever make a fighter that was competitive?
 
It’s good that Vought redeemed itself with the Corsair. Did Vultee ever make a fighter that was competitive?

It would seem they never did. They did manufacture the P-38 under licence. The company was merged with Consolidated aircraft to form Convair in 1943. Convair did produce fighters, eg. F-106.
 

MatthewB

Banned
Too bad. But I like Vultee’s Vengeance, being one of the few land based single engined dive bombers with an internal bomb bay.
 
Even so it was mostly used as a target tug as Britain had decided fighter bombers could do the job better by the time it was delivered.
 

Driftless

Donor
Wasn't a core tenet of the Vultee P-66 that it was using structural segments of other Vultee aircraft? A modular approach for cost savings purposes? (recycle some individual pieces and re-use tools and jigs wherever possible). When you look at the P-66, there's a kind of "kit-bashed" air about it.
 
Dear Driftless,
You have a good eye.
Vultee based their P-66 Vanguard on the same airframe as their BT-13 trainer. The original concept included three types of trainers plus a light fighter based on the same parts kit, but in the end only the BT-13 was built in significant numbers: 9,525. BT-13 Valiants remain popular with Warbird collectors.

North American tried the same thing with their AT-6 Texan trainer, but only 13 P-64 light fighters were built and only one survives to this day.

Australia was more successful their Boomerang light fighter - based on NAA’s T-6, building 250. Boomerangs were unspectacular as fighters, but earned their spurs attacking ground targets and as forward air controllers/artillery spotters.
 
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Driftless

Donor
Dear Driftless,
You have a good eye.
Vultee based their P-66 Vanguard on the same airframe as their BT-13 trainer. The original concept included three types of trainers plus a light fighter based on the same parts kit, but in the end only the BT-13 was built in significant numbers: 9,525. BT-13 Vindicators remain popular with Warbird collectors.

Your note jogs the memory.... Wasn't the P-66 connection to the BT-13 trainer and its purposely designed stability something of a performance damper as a fighter? Perhaps that's a characteristic of trainer derivatives? They're too stable to have the full aerobatic nimbleness that's useful to lighter, less powerful aircraft
 
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