F6F Vs. F4U

[Saxman]

One question about the rate of loss between the F6F and F4U, (incidentally, I think the fairly close numbers between the two aircraft out of those stationed aboard the CVEs is significant) is whether the F6F could really sustain more damage without going down, or if the milder handling characteristics of the F6F are coming into play? The F4U was already notorious for its low-speed handling characteristics--especially during carrier landings--as it is. How many of the losses factored in to the ratio were badly shot-up planes that made it home but cracked up trying to land? Or, aircraft that made it back but were so badly damaged the pilot elected to bail out rather than attempt a landing? While the aircraft made it home, it would technically be considered as a loss in both cases.

[Debonair]

Widewing, do you have comparable numbers for PTO P-61s?

[F4UDOA]

I love statistics.

Here are some of my favorites.

The top Navy Carrier fighter aircraft by claimed kill ratio. It should be noted that the F6F scored almost 5,000kills during this time and the F4U and FM-2 scores were in the hundreds so the comparison is not great because of the circumstances.

1. FM-2= 32 to 1 Kill ratio (not 27 to 1)
2. F6F= 20.22 to 1
3. F4U= 20 to 1


The Top Navy Land Based fighters by kill ratio

1. F4U= 11.4 to 1
2. F6F= 5 to 1
3. FM2/F4F= 2.6 to 1

It should also be noted that the victory totals are almost the same among all of these aircraft and the timeline of these kills was based more in 1942/43. Could it be possible that the combat that these aircraft faced in 1943 was somehow more difficult than in later years?

Well the question is this,

Does the fact that the F6F claimed 2470 kills between June and Oct 1944 mean that during the "Mariannes Turkey Shoot" that the pilots were more obsolete than the aircraft they were flying?

If you were to remove the results of the mariannes slaughter the kill numbers become very even and the kill ratio of the F6F comes way down. The F4U kill stats were never affected by the Mariannes because it wasn't there.

The bottom line in all these statistics is that the reason the F6F had the number of kills it had was because it was where the fight was when it was being fought. For that it should be recognized as the most significant Naval Aircraft of WW2. If Vought was guilty of anything it was not being Grumman in 1943 and not being able to break through the wall until it was absolutely neccesary to put higher performance aircraft on the decks of Carriers. Not more aircraft, higher performing aircraft.

As to durability of the F4U I would just point to the fact that the F4U dropped almost 3 times as much ordinance (15,621 tons vs 6,603) than the F6F while sustaining far fewer losses to AAA (553 to 349). Ground attack is perhaps the greatest test of durability of all possible test.

And besides the F4U shot down a Mig-15 in Korea and a P-51D in El Salvador and that has got to be worth 2,500 Zekes any day

[F4UDOA]

Saxman,

Two things,

1. In almost the same number of total sorties many more F6F's were lost to operational accidents than the F4U.

2. Of all of the Navy and Marine squadrons that were put on Carriers in 1945 most of them had almost no carrier experiance before deploying for combat nor did the crews aboard those ships have experiance working on non Grumman aircraft but somehow they managed to not only serve but achieve the same kill ratio on carriers as the mighty F6F while maintaining service ratios only fractionally lower.

I leave you with this

Speed

[Shuckins]

The reason the Hellcat was where the fight was when it was being fought was because of it's superior carrier compatibility performance.  The Navy simply was not willing to accept the level of losses among young pilots resulting from the Corsair's dangerous low-speed handling characteristics.

An article in Flight Journal's special edition about the Corsair had this quote from Captain Eric Brown, in response to a question about why the British Royal navy was able to carrier-qualify the Corsair more than a year before the American Navy:

"We were a bit desperate at that time with our new carriers being launched faster than we were able to equip them...The Corsairs gave us a bit of a hard time, and we soon understood exactly why the Americans had so much trouble with them.  One problem was the bad view over the nose.  Also, if one got slow on approach and added full powe to go around again, one could induce an uncontrollable torque roll.  Because of the Corsair's small stabilizing vertical-fin area and high power, the aircraft would then yaw, roll, stall and spin into the water.  It also had a most non-resilient landing gear that would bounce the beast over the barrier into the parked aircraft pack on the foredeck.

It's redeeming factor was its high kill rate - second only to the Hellcat's, but the high accident rate cost a lot of Allied pilots their lives.  The Royal Navy had a lot of trash in its Seafire and Sea Hurricane aircraft because neither was designed from the ground up for carrier operations."

Question answer:  because of its great need for carrier fighters, the British Royal Navy accepted the Corsair's abysmal accident losses."

Indeed, the Corsair's handling and carrier compatability problems were never fully resolved, despite the fact that it continued in service with the Navy for many years after the end of the war.  

In that same article it mentions that in a 1952 F4U-5 Pilots' Handbook it stated clearly on page 29, "At the stall with POWER ON, FLAPS DOWN, a roll off to the left is violent and is accompanied by a 600 to 900 food loss in altitude."  At this late date in the Corsair's long history, torque roll still caused too many accidents when a pilot added power during a landing-signal officer's wafe-off on a poor carrier-landing approach.

Two Vought WWII test pilots, when asked why it took so long to cure the Corsair's carrier-landing bounce and torque-roll stall accident problems, responded:  Vought's engineering boss simply didn't want to hear that anything was wrong with the Corsair, even from Navy-trained test pilots.

So the choice of the Hellcat over the Corsair wasn't simply a matter of choosing the fighter with the best straight-line performance.

[bkbandit]

Originally posted by Debonair
Widewing, do you have comparable numbers for PTO P-61s?

this is blue planes only(mainly hellcat and crosair), why would there be posts of p61, and we dont even have that plane anyway(i would like to see it but after tod, again... in 2 week:furious )

[Widewing]

Originally posted by F4UDOA

The Top Navy Land Based fighters by kill ratio

1. F4U= 11.4 to 1
2. F6F= 5 to 1
3. FM2/F4F= 2.6 to 1

As to durability of the F4U I would just point to the fact that the F4U dropped almost 3 times as much ordinance (15,621 tons vs 6,603) than the F6F while sustaining far fewer losses to AAA (553 to 349). Ground attack is perhaps the greatest test of durability of all possible test.

That's pretty damn selective there.. You picked the smallest possible population to support your argument. Plucking stats out of their context is somewhat disingenuous. Now, by taking the whole population of land based Corsairs and Hellcats by adding in Marine land based F4Us and F6Fs to the equation, the ratios are:

F4U: 8.0/1
F6F: 8.9/1

As to durability, the document defines this very well, and we've had this discussion before.

Here's what the document says in reference to tripleA losses (it's already in the earlier text):

The reason is that land-based aircraft generally were assigned to attack the less well-defended rear area targets, already well beaten down by the carrier forces, such as those in the Marshalls and Philippines. Also their campaigns against such heavily defended targets as the Rabaul area were of long duration, and by the later stages enemy A/A guns had been greatly reduced in number and ammunition supplies depleted. Carrier aircraft, on the other hand, were constantly reaching out toward the most heavily defended targets, pressing their attacks close to wipe out such small and vital targets as grounded aircraft, warships and merchant vessels, and seldom staying long enough to enjoy the benefits of the reduced A/A defenses resulting from their attacks.

The fact is that land based units faced far less formidable tripleA than did the carrier units, regardless of what they were flying. Close support missions encountered the least lethal tripleA, as enemy infantry units generally were armed with just light MGs and rifles. Unlike the Germans, Japanese Army units were very poorly armed for defending themselves against air attack. Inasmuch as the F6F flew the vast majority of carrier sorties against the well defended targets described above, you would expect heavier losses.

I'm at a complete loss to understand your vendetta against Grumman and the F6F. There's no denying that the F4U was a tremedous fighter, but the F6F was certainly just as good, and without question more important to the war's outcome. Seriously, what motivates your dislike?

My regards,

Widewing

[Debonair]

Originally posted by bkbandit
this is blue planes only(mainly hellcat and crosair), why would there be posts of p61, and we dont even have that plane anyway(i would like to see it but after tod, again... in 2 week:furious )

Yeah, I know that, but the P-61 is a favorite of mine & I haven't ever found any information on even one of them being lost in second world war combat, so it's ratio is seemingly untouchable, but my research skills are a bit amteurish...

[bkbandit]

another thread.......start one but not here. start a new thread, maybe more interest will get it added later and maybe even nite all together. But hellcat and f4u both had nite variants keeping this thread moveing right along on track.

[Widewing]

Originally posted by Debonair
Yeah, I know that, but the P-61 is a favorite of mine & I haven't ever found any information on even one of them being lost in second world war combat, so it's ratio is seemingly untouchable, but my research skills are a bit amteurish...

As far as I can determine, in the Pacific war...69 kills, two probables against no losses.

My regards,

Widewing

[F4UDOA]

I'm at a complete loss to understand your vendetta against Grumman and the F6F. There's no denying that the F4U was a tremedous fighter, but the F6F was certainly just as good, and without question more important to the war's outcome. Seriously, what motivates your dislike?

Funny you should say this since you are the Grumman and Lockheed rep for Aces High.

I have nothing against the F6F in fact I have collected more data on the F6F that any other bird except the F4U.

What I do see on these boards however is an effort to re-write history and create some performance equality with the F4U and F6F that did not exist Until Corkey Meyers started his writing career However even  Corkey jokes that if Boone Guyton were alive that he would disagree. Lost in this is the fact the Meyer was the Cheif Grumman test pilot.

The other arguement that is presented is the superiority by kill ratio. Yes the F6F had a superior kill ratio for the war but this did not tell the whole story.
In similar circumstances the F4U was either equal or superior provided that the time and place were the same.

That's pretty damn selective there.. You picked the smallest possible population to support your argument. Plucking stats out of their context is somewhat disingenuous. Now, by taking the whole population of land based Corsairs and Hellcats by adding in Marine land based F4Us and F6Fs to the equation, the ratios are:

F4U: 8.0/1
F6F: 8.9/1

Your math is wrong? I don't know how you got 8/1 for the F4U.

Page 22 Land based F4U total- 1560kills-155losses= 10.06 to 1.

However.

That actually helps my point of the parity of kill ratios in the same conditions. This does not prove the F6F as an uber tank that could not be shot down.

Also you should note that 68 claims were made by land based F6F Night Fighter Squadrons (I believe these were all Marine Squadrons). There were 93 land based Marine claims for the war and 115 made by land based Navy squadrons for a total of 208kills and 25 losses. But if you subract out the 68 kills and 2 losses in night time action the results are very different.

Daytime Landbased Kill ratio's for the war

F6F- 6.08/1
F4U- 10.4/1

Widwing,

This thread was a technical discussion but you brought the kill ratios into it. They are very subjective and inaccurate. It is obvious by these numbers that nothing can be proven to show superiority of one A/C over the other except by sheer volume from 5 months of lopsided fighting in one area.

What these stats show clearly however is the parity of the skill of the pilots and the enemy in every theater represented. Navy carrier, Marine Carrier, Navy land and Marine land. Almost dead equal throughout.

These stats show much more of pilots than aircraft.

[Widewing]

Originally posted by F4UDOA
Funny you should say this since you are the Grumman and Lockheed rep for Aces High.

I have nothing against the F6F in fact I have collected more data on the F6F that any other bird except the F4U.

What I do see on these boards however is an effort to re-write history and create some performance equality with the F4U and F6F that did not exist Until Corkey Meyers started his writing career However even  Corkey jokes that if Boone Guyton were alive that he would disagree. Lost in this is the fact the Meyer was the Cheif Grumman test pilot.

The other arguement that is presented is the superiority by kill ratio. Yes the F6F had a superior kill ratio for the war but this did not tell the whole story.
In similar circumstances the F4U was either equal or superior provided that the time and place were the same.

I suppose that having logged nearly 2,000 hours in Grumman airplanes makes me a fan.. Getting aboard the carrier without incident 332 times establishes a certain level of admiration for one's aircraft..

You continue to blast Meyer, but he has major league credentials..hall of fame level, in fact.

Here's a little bit about Corky:

"Corky Meyer was born on April 14, 1920 in Springfield, Illinois. After High School he attended the University of Illinois and went on to M.I.T. Corky received his flight training and obtained his commercial, instructor, instrument and multi-engine ratings from the Civilian Pilot Training Program in
1940 – 42.

After working as a trainee for Pan American Airways, Corky joined Grumman in 1942 and soon became the project pilot for the F6F Hellcat, F7F Tigercat, F8F Bearcat, F9F Panther, XF10F-1 Jaguar, and the F11F Tiger series.

He has flown many of the high-performance aircraft made in the 1940s including a Japanese A6M Zero.

In 1947 Corky performed first flight of the XF9F-2 Panther, Grumman’s first jet fighter. He was head of Grumman Flight Operations at Edwards Air Force Base from 1952-56. In 1954 he became the first civilian pilot to qualify aboard an aircraft carrier, when he landed aboard USS Lake Champlain (CVS-39) flying an F9F-6 Cougar.
 
In 1967 Corky was elected Vice President of the Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation guiding the company through its many reorganizations. In 1969 he was elected to the board of directors of the Grumman Aerospace Corporation, and in 1972 became senior Vice President of GAC. In 1974 Corky became President and CEO of Grumman American, a commercial aircraft subsidiary. Before he retired from his 36-year career with Grumman in 1978 Corky had tested and evaluated more than 125 different types of both military and commercial jet and piston-engine aircraft. He continued his career in aviation as president and CEO of the Enstrom Helicopter Corporation and later Falcon Jet Corporation.

Corky was inducted into the Carrier Aviation Test Pilots Hall of Honor at Patriots Point Naval and Maritime Museum in Charleston, South Carolina in 1995. On May 9, 1997, at a banquet held at the National Museum of Naval Aviation, Pensacola, Florida, he was named Honorary Naval Aviator No. 23.

His other achievements include being a founding member, as well as a Fellow of the Society of Experimental Test Pilots (and accepting the James H. Doolittle Award in 1971), an Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, the Wright Stuff Association – Wright Field World War Two Test Pilots Association, the Early and Pioneer Naval Aviators Association of Golden Eagles, and the Aerospace Walk of Honor."

I'll leave a space here where you can list your aviation accomplishments. You know, the ones that qualify you to judge Mr. Meyer.... Just type in your resume between the arrows.

-->       <--

Furthermore, Meyer is an expert on the F6F and to a substantial extent, the F4U as well. If you recall (and even if you don't), Grumman was given an F4U-1D, BuNo. 57157 to test and determine if the revised oleo struts had made it ready for carrier service. Grumman did extensive drop tests and they made additional modifications to the struts. When the engineers were satisfied, Meyer flew a series of Field Carrier landings and signed off the Corsair as CV ready... Why would the Navy enlist Grumman to evaluate Vought's bounce solution? Maybe because they thought Grumman had the experience and honesty to be objective.

Your math is wrong? I don't know how you got 8/1 for the F4U.

Page 22 Land based F4U total- 1560kills-155losses= 10.06 to 1.

However.

That actually helps my point of the parity of kill ratios in the same conditions. This does not prove the F6F as an uber tank that could not be shot down.

Also you should note that 68 claims were made by land based F6F Night Fighter Squadrons (I believe these were all Marine Squadrons). There were 93 land based Marine claims for the war and 115 made by land based Navy squadrons for a total of 208kills and 25 losses. But if you subract out the 68 kills and 2 losses in night time action the results are very different.

Daytime Landbased Kill ratio's for the war

F6F- 6.08/1
F4U- 10.4/1

Once again, you are comparing the smallest possible population to draw conclusions. Just over 5,000 action sorties were flown by land based Hellcats, while around 54,000 sorties were flown by F4Us. You are ignoring the other 62,000+ F6F action sorties, because they don't support your argument. In that regard, you are arguing a single data point as evidence to contradict the whole analysis. In short, you're parsing the data to support facts not in evidence... But, you tend do that, so no shock there.

Oh, and this thread began as a discussion of the relative merits of the F4U and F6F in the game. It was you who decided to make it a technical discussion and I who introduced the Navy Statisical Analysis for survivability after it was suggested that the F4U was more survivable than the P-47 and Henning pointed out that the SBD was the champ in that regard. I tossed in the K/D stats to boot. This thread has followed several paths.. But now it's become a typically shrill anti-Grumman, anti-Meyer tirade and it's getting to be a bore.

So, I'll leave you to reply and be done with it. But, don't forget to fill in between those arrows there ace...

My regards,

Widewing

[Debonair]

Originally posted by Widewing
As far as I can determine, in the Pacific war...69 kills, two probables against no losses.

My regards,

Widewing

Thanks for the info, if it is correct then the P-61 seems to have had no combat losses to enemy action for the war (one was dropped by an RAF Mossie:mad: )
zOMG ratio!!!1:O

[Scherf]

You'd have to look at the ETO stats as well then.

Incidentally, do you have details on the friendly fire incident? (For the files ... )

[F4UDOA]

Widewing,

Your loyalty to Grumman is noted but not necessary. I am already aware of it.

Here are another couple facts about Corkey Meyer.

1. He was a lifetime Grumman Employee and the last time I check he was human. You take the opinions of all of the pilots of the 1944 Joint Fighter Conferance (Combat pilots not Contract) and completely disregard them but somehow the chief test pilot from Grumman should be the final word in your arguement. Why don't you just ask Roy Grumman?

BTW, The Society Of Experamental Test Pilots (A group founded by Corkey Meyer) found the F4U-1D to be superior to the F6F as a fighter plane and a fighter bomber which agrees with the 1944 JFC and the 1944 Independant Naval Review that all found the F4U to be a "Superior" fighter aircraft.

2. Here is another piece of Corkey Meyer trivia. He was turned down by Vought early in the F4U program to be a Vought Test pilot.

Sour grapes? Maybe.

When I use the F4U in carrier service you say the F4U didn't fly enough missions there so I am cherry picking stats. Then you use the F4U and F6F land based sorties as an example and I correct your errors and you say it it to small a statistic after you brought it up and fudged the numbers. If it is so meaningless why are you bringing it up?

And by the way that is the second time you got the stats wrong with the kill ratios. First you said the FM-2 was 27/1 kill ratio and then land based F4U's at 8/1. Did your calculator break or are you having a hard time with facts?

The fact is in every catagory where conditions are the same the F4U is equal or superior in kill ratio. In fact using your criteria the FM-2 and SBD were the two greatest aircraft in the Naval inventory.

So, I'll leave you to reply and be done with it. But, don't forget to fill in between those arrows there ace...

That's pretty compelling stuff from a retired Stewardess there Ace...