"Selection" criteria....

[moot]

Location: Lost in the "hyperbole" zone.

LOL

[Bronk]

Originally posted by moot
LOL

Figured it out didn't ya.

Edit: moot check your PMs.

[skyctpn]

I find this hilarious these guys will argue squadron numbers and combat time to the inth degree "only 100 built" then go back to the MA and up an osti (45 or so built almost no recorded combat action mentioned anywhere) and happily shoot down aircraft.  When I was a young soldier I had a commander who told us.. "oneday we may ask you to die on a beach somewhere.. dont spend your time dying on other beaches in your life."

Fight on the beach we are at now.. quit dying on beaches we havent attacked yet.

[Krusty]

Humble, read the full article, all 8 pages or so. He goes into depth about spin testing, being unable to recover, and basically he gave up testing early because even the first step in an entire series of spin tests was impossible to recover without a spin recovery chute. He then says they made a rule against ever spinning the F7F, possibly with some wording about "acrobatics" as well. Also they had to get the plane request (the one the F7F was designed to fill) requirements eased up on spin recovery so that it could even be produced in the first place!

The Tigercat broke the safety requirements it was built for, in that it could not recover from spins after (I think it stipulated) 4 turns. This was the very request this plane was designed to fulfill.


Sure, it had speed, firepower, and rocket climb, but when the test pilot meets the other guy and asks him what his thoughts were, the guy belts out a laundry list of shortcomings and the test pilot guy admits that every one of these flaws was true. DESPITE that, he loved the plane for the good qualities (already mentioned), but don't gloss over the fact that these problems existed and were in some cases very serious problems.

[Krusty]

For those that don't want to read it, this is from the very link widewing pointed out, and from where I got this info in the first place:

With the Tigercat's excellent performance and flight characteristics demonstrated, the Navy decided that, despite the fighter's minimum controllability and single-engine-failure takeoff speed (40mph more than the Navy requirement), it should go into production as soon as possible. Understand that, in early 1944, the War in the Pacific was far from over, so maximum production numbers were mandatory. After his four flights in November 1943, Bob Hall ordered the fin to be enlarged 29.2 percent to meet the single-engine criterion. But such a significant change could not be designed, groundand flight-tested, and then implemented in the production line until the 106th Tigercat F7F-3N BuNo 80365 was delivered in July 1945-two and a half years after the problem became apparent!

I had successfully spun and recovered the production F4F-4 Wildcat and F6F-3 Hellcat to 10 turns. Engineering did not consider the experimental anti-spin chute necessary for the Tigercat because of the powerful thrust of an offset engine in a twin-engine aircraft, which aids in spin recovery. Bob Hall strongly suggested that I proceed very slowly in building up the number of spin turns prior to recovery and to increase only a half turn at a time before attempting recovery. His wisdom was soon to be greatly appreciated. Let the spins begin.

The first half-turn spin attempt seemed to have sluggish, half-turn recovery to anti-spin control reactions. After a one-- turn spin, it took one whole turn to recover with full anti-- spin controls. An alarm went off in my head because, after one- to four-turn spins, the Hellcat and Wildcat recovered immediately when their controls were released. Even after 10 turns, those aircraft took only one turn for recovery!

At one and a half turns from right- or left-spin entries, the F7F's nose tended to rise during the last portion of the spin, and it took an all-too-long one and a half turns for recovery after "instant" full anti-spin control application. The continued need for an equal number of turns to recover from the same number of spin turns sounded a much louder alarm bell. I should have quit then and there, but being inexperienced, I completed two-turn spins. They required two slow turns for recovery. The nose was definitely rising toward a flat, uncontrollable spin in the second turn before recovery controls were applied. The two turns required for recovery seemed to take ages. I became very concerned about this new aircraft's spin-recovery lethargy, so I returned to base to talk to the engineers

One of the engineers suggested that we check the Tigercat NACA spin tunnel model report! I had never heard about a NACA spin tunnel or of such a report on the Tigercat's spinning tendencies; my education was expanding. That report detailed how the model F7F-1 tunnel spins indeed showed the nose rising in the first few turns and going flat and the plane becoming unrecoverable after four turns. Bob Hall decreed that we stop at two turns. He then promptly discussed the problem with the Navy and got the Tigercat requirement-to my great relief-limited to only a two-turn, upright spin. Because of the long and sluggish recovery cycle, the Navy stated in the pilots' handbook, "All spins and snap rolls are prohibited maneuvers in F7F aircraft." In spite of that warning, a few weeks later, a military test pilot at Patuxent decided to try spinning a Tigercat. As predicted in the wind-tunnel report, the plane went flat at the fourth turn, and it continued to spin for 20 more unrecoverable turns until it hit the ground, killing the pilot instantly.

Talking to Capt Trapnell during the Pather trials (post-war)

At the end of his evaluation, as we walked out to his F7F-4N Tigercat for his return trip to the Naval Air Test Center, I proudly told him that I was the Tigercat project pilot from 1943 to 1946. He immediately burst into a diatribe about the Tigercat's many deficiencies: the over-cooling of the engines; a lack of longitudinal stability; excessively high dihedral rolling effect with rudder input; the high, minimum single-engine control speed, etc. He ended his oration with: "If I had been the chief of the Test Center at that time, I would have had you fired!" Each criticism of the Tigercat was absolutely correct. I was devastated and fervently wished that I hadn't gotten out of bed that day.

After that he said he thought it was the best fighter ever, listing great forward view for carrier landings, tricycle landing gear for faster checks, boosted ailerons, and the wonderful engines. None of that includes handling, stability, or the dangerous aspects. Overall it was the best for a lot of things, but the worst in other things.

[Bronk]

Originally posted by Widewing


Handling was considered outstanding, with a few quirks such as not spinning it more than three turns (manual states no more than two).


My regards,

Widewing

Don't put it in a spin. Check

[humble]

Krusty,

The spin portion was modified because the plane was so well behaveed otherwise. It was an exceptionally docile plane and very easily recovered from an inadvertent spin. The P-39 had similiar shortcomings with regard to spin. So much so that pilots were instructed to bail out immediately if/when it entered one. As already mentioned above, final recommendation....dont spin the thing and you'll be fine.

Bottom line the spin recovery was a standard boilerplate and not specific to the F7F was in the end was viewed as a minor flaw and altered accordingly.

[Krusty]

Seems there was more than JUST a spin issue.

He immediately burst into a diatribe about the Tigercat's many deficiencies: the over-cooling of the engines; a lack of longitudinal stability; excessively high dihedral rolling effect with rudder input; the high, minimum single-engine control speed, etc.

Maybe in a level, power-on, full flaps, carrier landing it was steady [edit; I don't know what criteria they were considering it to be docile with], but let me make another comparison to show why that's not saying much about the rest of the flight characteristics. It's gentle on landing, but so is a 262 in this game, and that doesn't make it a very good plane in most other situations.

Not trying to compare the two, just pulling a really bad example that happens to have nice landing characteristics.


P.S. Humble, doesn't seem to imply that conclusion based on the article. Seems that they had an emergency meeting, and like they said on page 1, in 1944 the war was still very much in full swing. Production was #1. We've seen other planes with issues that were put into production despite a lack of favorable qualities. As long as fighting vehicles were pumped out, standards could be cut .

[humble]

"It's the best damn fighter I've ever flown."

Hmmm did you miss this part Krusty?

[Widewing]

Krusty, you are taking comments out of their context to support statements that have no resemblance to reality.

"Deliberate spinning is prohibited because the spin tends to flatten out after two or three turns."

Page 28, Paragraph 16 of the P-38 Pilot's Manual.

Sounds familiar doesn't it?

"Never spin a P-47 intentionally."

Page 55 of the P-47D Pilot's Manual.

The P-61 manual also expressly forbids deliberate spins as the aircraft becomes unrecoverable after a spin fully develops (3 to 4 full spins).

Krusty, rather than reinforce your growing reputation as an uninformed windbag, do a little research and base your opinion on fact rather than your seeming narrow understanding.

My regards,

Widewing