Cunctator

When the Hellcat entered combat, there was just the Enterprise left of the 3 Yorktowns. Better use the resources to model some battleship, cruisers, destroyers etc. to built believable task forces around the Essex class.

With over 1000 built the F6F-5N Nightfighter was no exotic, but the USNs main carrier based nightfighter. Unlike previous WW2 sims, DCS actually models Radar, a potential that would be sad if unused. I am not aware that any accurate simulation of a WW2 nightfighter was ever done before. A Radar equipped variant would add another level of possibilities and make out most of the limited plane set of nascent DCS WW2 Pacific.

When looking at this numbers the overall strategical situation has to be taken into account. The Hellcat amassed most of these kills during the push trough the Central Pacific in 1944. By then most of the experienced IJN pilots were already dead, killed at Midway or during the war of attrition in the Solomons in 1942/43. Their wartime replacements weren't nearly as well trained and now had to face numerically superior US forces. It wasn't called the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot for nothing. The F4U entered combat more than half a year before the Hellcat. After the hard fighting during the Solomons campaign in 1943, the F4U squadrons on the other hand hadn't much opportunity for aerial combat in 1944*, doing mostly ground attack missions in support of the Marines from shore bases. This only changed in early 1945 when F4Us were based on USN carriers in numbers. * 179 USN/USMC F4Us were lost in aerial combat during WW2. 86, or 48% during the 11 months of combat in 1943, 48 during the entire year of 1944 and another 45 during just 7.5 months of 1945.

From reddit:

I have this picture labeled as "Goodyear Airdock" on my HD. Another one from the outside:

From Facebook:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7YyDajavgk

A turbocharged version was indeed developed, the XF4U-3, but it never went into production. A better high altitude performance was not required at this stage of the war and the turbocharger over no benefits over the super charged F4U-4 at lower altitudes.

In 2015 when the Iwo Jima map was conceived Nevada wasn't even released. Nobody thought about a Marianas map back then. So much has changed that I would be very surprised if this map is ever completed now.

It still saw combat however, at the time of the Vietnam war. During the Soccer War in July 1969 between El Salvador and Honduras. Both sides used F4Us, El Salvador the F4U-1D and Honduras F4U-5s. France still used their F4U-7 in Algeria in the early 1960s.

I love the Heinkel high performance designs from the 19030ties. He 70, He 112, He 118, He 100, all beautiful planes with clean lines. Sadly they not never enjoyed the success they deserved.

WW2 Marianas is going to be incredible! looks like the F4U release and the map will be close together.

On approach?

The antennas were tilted by 90° to be level with the flight deck. You can see this in the second photo (USS Boxer) in Rudel's post above from 2nd February 2021.

Exactly. ED has already announced that they will do a WW2 version of the Marianas map. The F4U is almost finished now and M3L has shown screenshots of Japaneses ground assets they are working on. Thus all elements for a minimum viable Pacific scenario would be there if somebody makes a Zero. You have to start somewhere. I fully expect that F6F or Zero or both will be announced this year. Otherwise too many things like the Pacific Theater sub forum here or the Fw190A repainted as a Zero in the 2022 and beyond video wouldn't make any sense.

My thoughts exactly. Also I presume that is the reason why they were showing the Fw190A painted as a Zero so prominently in the 2022 beyond video.

Yes it did. In the last 45s you can see the system in action:

They are the same shown here. https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/de/downloads/screenshots/572/

Except escort and photographing the attack Corsairs did strafe flak batteries and dive bombed the Tirpitz. The faster Corsairs could attack ahead of the Barracudas before the German smoke screen was fully deployed and obscuring the target. They were also possible involved in some attacks against coastal shipping. All in all the FAA launched some 12 attacks against the Tirpitz or close targets between April and late August 1944, divided into 8 fleet sorties.

From Facebook. Night lightning

Actually yes. Ju88 could just drop torpedoes when released, no bombs. They came later.

M3 was talking about doing some Japanese ground assets by themselves last year. But I hope ED has some things in the pipeline too for the WW2 versions of the Marinas map and their rumored F6F module. https://leatherneck-sim.com/2020/05/20/crouching-update/