Originally posted by hogenbor
Hi Widewing,
Was the CW-21 really that good? I knew that the Dutch (I am Dutch btw) had some, but the little info I had on them dismissed them as basically useless, a vulnerable trainer with armament. Do you know of more (on-line) info?
I think that the Zeroes we have in AH are quite useless, too slow, too vulnerable, can't B&Z. Is still maintain that dogfighting is stupid if you want to live. That having said, a P-40B is so underpowered that once it has depleted it shallow E reserves, it's dead against the A6M
Erik wrote about the CW-21 on usenet too. He posted, "I have flown a CW-21, an aircraft built by Curtiss Wright in 1938 that's empty weight was 3050 lbs which was 10 mph faster than the Zero, could out climb the Zero by more than 2500 fpm, and 100 mph faster in a dive faster and had a higher role rate as well. Why didn't the military buy it. Just dumb I guess."
There's little of value on the web. However, much can be found in various books. For example, the CW-21B used by the Dutch was considerably cleanedup aerodynamically. It was able to reach a max speed of 333 mph at 18,000 feet. Additional weight added in during the redesign cut into its climb rate, but a fully loaded CW-21B could still climb in excess of 4,500 ft/min.
One of the factors that hurt the Demon was its light structure and lack of self-sealing fuel tanks. It durability was no greater than that of the Japanese fighters opposing it. Nonetheless, it could handily out-perform the Ki-43 in every category of measurable performance. Indeed, it had a slightly better wing loading than the lightest Ki-43 (23.7 lbs/sqft vs 24.2 lbs/sqft) and a significantly better power loading. Think of the Demon as an over- powered Extra 300 with retractable landing gear and guns.....
Simply stated, it was almost exactly the opposite of what the USAAF was looking for in a fighter.
My regards,
Widewing
