How does the F4U Stack Up against the 190 and 109?

[percydanvers]

Asking out of general ignorance on my part. How will we want to approach combat in/against this aircraft. 

[Gunfreak]

I'm very very far from an expert,  but I have read a tiny bit to get ready for the module and it appears both the hellcat and Cosair was used as boom and zoom planes againt the Japanese.

However I don't know how they will fare in a boom and zoom fight against the German planes.

 

[TOZZVogh]

The video is long (1h31mins), and talks more about 1943 models than late 1944 like we have in dcs (It tries to put itself in the position of evaluating if the F6F and F4U could have been chosen over the p47 or p51)
But we can still get some informations out of it, like that the corsair has a similar roll rate to the 190 for exemple, we can also assume that the 109 will outclimb the corsair like the G6 did the f4u-1a in the video.

It might be due to the zero being the opposition but I think we tend to underestimate the pacific bird's agility too.

[chris455]

I know this post is rather old, but I am only now reading Duels in the Sky by the legendary Eric Brown. Mr. Brown does not give the Corsair much of a chance against the Focke-Wulf 190, which surprises me. Gives Hellcat roughly decent odds against it. 

I personally feel that at altitude an F4u should be able to more than hold it's own against an Anton, but I have no charts available just now to base that on-

Just really happy we are getting a Corsair at any rate, and a carrier to go with it!

Cheers, 

 

[SlipHavoc]

In addition to the video above, there's a historical document at ww2aircraftperformance.org comparing the F4U-1, F6F-3, and FW 190 A-4: http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/fw190/ptr-1107.pdf

To summarize, according to that report at least:

• FW 190 has a better climb rate at higher airspeeds, although not sure how the absolute climb rates compare at each plane's best speed.
• F4U is considerably faster than the FW 190 at sea level, about equal at 15k ft, and slower at 25k ft.  The F6F was slower than the other two at all altitudes except at sea level, where it was equal to the FW 190.
• Roll rate of the F4U and FW 190 are about equal, which is impressive since the FW 190 is well known for having an excellent roll rate.
• Turn performance of the F4U and F6F were "far superior" to the FW 190, both being able to get behind the FW 190 from a head-on merge within one full turn.
• General maneuverability of the F4U and F6F was also better, with tighter loops, better behavior in tight turns (FW 190 tends to drop a wing abruptly), and formation flying was easier due to finer engine control.
• Forward visibility was considered to be worse in the FW 190 vs the other two, but rear visibility was better.
• The general recommendation given for F4U and F6F pilots is to get close and beat the FW 190 in a turn fight.  In my (limited) experience the FW 190 is best used in hit-and-run attacks, diving on an unsuspecting target, blasting it with massive firepower, and then running away, so that kinda lines up with this report.

Also worth keeping in mind that these comparisons could change significantly with the specific variants of the planes, and even with things like propeller type and other factors.  One thing pointed out in another Greg's video is that US Navy planes were not particularly optimized for high altitude, as the main threat was from dive bombers at medium altitude and torpedo bombers at low altitude; level-bombing ships from 25,000 ft is basically impossible, even if the Axis powers had the planes to do it, which they mostly didn't.  Whereas even very early in the war in the European theater, high altitude performance was emphasized for bombing and recon, and escorting those planes.

[LordBlueBaron22]

nullI'm going to put this here in the hope it serves any use. I can't bring the website to the table but I remember reading that the Corsair out preformed the Zero in ever aspect but slow speed maneuvering. I believe this website was comparing the F4U to the A6M5. The website also stated that the Corsair has a slightly slower sustained turnrate against the 109 but I cannot remember the models. Take those claims with grains of salt please. 

[chris455]

Eric Browne in his book Duels in the Sky gave the F4U next to no chance vs the Focke-Wulf, and gave the Hellcat's chances as only even. This is THE legendary Eric Brown who spent many hours in all three types.

[LordBlueBaron22]

On 6/21/2022 at 7:28 PM, chris455 said:

Eric Browne in his book Duels in the Sky gave the F4U next to no chance vs the Focke-Wulf, and gave the Hellcat's chances as only even. This is THE legendary Eric Brown who spent many hours in all three types.

Odd, I'm under the impression the Corsair is better than the Hellcat in almost everyway.

[Mogster]

On 6/24/2022 at 9:25 AM, LordBlueBaron22 said:

Odd, I'm under the impression the Corsair is better than the Hellcat in almost everyway.

Brown’s dislike of the F4U and love of the F6F is well documented, he also preferred the FW190 over the Me109.

Being primarily a carrier qualifying test pilot he did place a lot of stock in how the average pilot could manage the aircraft and particularly landing characteristics, areas where the F4U scores poorly. His aircraft rankings were just his personal opinions and preferences and he never attempted to pretend anything else. He did fly the aircraft though and was trained to review them in an analytical fashion which gives weight to his opinion. Brown was employed as a consultant by LM early on in the F35 program, his opinions and insight were valued right up to his death. His books are great reading although some are out of print now.

Theres some discussion about his personal ratings on this thread.

https://ww2aircraft.net/forum/threads/eric-browns-duels-in-the-sky.32785/

 

Edited June 26, 2022 by Mogster

[-0303-]

On 6/10/2022 at 6:44 PM, SlipHavoc said:

... US Navy planes were not particularly optimized for high altitude, as the main threat was from dive bombers at medium altitude and torpedo bombers at low altitude; level-bombing ships from 25,000 ft is basically impossible, even if the Axis powers had the planes to do it, which they mostly didn't.  Whereas even very early in the war in the European theater, high altitude performance was emphasized for bombing and recon, and escorting those planes.

One might think a "rejigging" of the F4U turbocharger could significantly improve altitude performance. Something that would have happened. The Spitfire came in variants engine optimized for high or low altitudes.

 

Quote

Brown was employed as a consultant by LM early on in the F35 program, his opinions and insight were valued right up to his death.

Damn. I'd figure if not croaked at least retired by then...

Edited July 11, 2022 by -0303-

[Bremspropeller]

24 minutes ago, -0303- said:

One might think a "rejigging" of the F4U turbocharger could significantly improve altitude performance. Something that would have happened. The Spitfire came in variants engine optimized for high or low altitudes.

The F4U (operational variants, that is) only had superchargers. However, this is exactly what the F4U-4 and -5 did with the introduction of a two-stage supercharger. It only came a little late to make any significant dent into the outcome of the war. Both the -4 and -5 were used a lot in Korea and other skirmishes. France used their Corsairs intensely in Indochina.

[Cunctator]

1 hour ago, -0303- said:

One might think a "rejigging" of the F4U turbocharger could significantly improve altitude performance. Something that would have happened. The Spitfire came in variants engine optimized for high or low altitudes.

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.

[Omega417]

I know its really late but I remember reading this magazine article a while ago about when the Brits used Hellcats against the Luftwaffe. While not the Corsair it should still be somewhat informative.

https://www.historynet.com/when-hellcats-took-the-fight-to-the-luftwaffe/

[Gunfreak]

18 hours ago, Omega417 said:

I know its really late but I remember reading this magazine article a while ago about when the Brits used Hellcats against the Luftwaffe. While not the Corsair it should still be somewhat informative.

https://www.historynet.com/when-hellcats-took-the-fight-to-the-luftwaffe/

Sounds like Magnitude should have made the Hellcat, while I love! The corsair. The hellcat saw more carrier action and action fought German fighters. Something Corsair never did. And since I really do doubt we will get a full worthy Pacific environment (I honestly think the corsair, Essex, ww2 Marianas and some Japanese ground units is all we'll get for Pacific, mabye if we're really lucky we'll get an AI zero or mabye even payable in 6 years. But we probably won't get proper naval assets,  we won't get a proper selection of AI planes (Japanese or American) so we'll mostly be stuck with corsair ground pounding. 

The hellcat saw more action. Also in Europe. 

[Omega417]

I'd agree, but I think they might be looking to create a new variant for a Korean oriented theater. Ground pounding in the Pacific and island hopping campaigns sound fun to me. And I would hope this could be the catalyst behind another group wanting to create a Zero or other Japanese aircraft or even more USN carrier fighters.

[Lynnux]

If the planes are modeled correctly, you'll be able to pit them in DCS and get some insights. That's the advantage of modern flight sims.

Practically in WW2, why should the F-4U should have fared worse than e.g. the P-47 in Europe ? Maybe because the focus being on high-altitude bombing raids. But else ?

Edited October 3, 2022 by Lynnux

[Spurts]

14 hours ago, Lynnux said:

 

Practically in WW2, why should the F-4U should have fared worse than e.g. the P-47 in Europe ? 

 

Armor?

[Omega417]

17 hours ago, Lynnux said:

Practically in WW2, why should the F-4U should have fared worse than e.g. the P-47 in Europe?

 

I'd Imagine rearward visibility would play a factor.

[Gunfreak]

20 hours ago, Lynnux said:

If the planes are modeled correctly, you'll be able to pit them in DCS and get some insights. That's the advantage of modern flight sims.

Practically in WW2, why should the F-4U should have fared worse than e.g. the P-47 in Europe ? Maybe because the focus being on high-altitude bombing raids. But else ?

 

Wasn't the Corsair quite a bit faster than the P47? And just some random googeling show the Corsair was even faster than the Me109K4 which is in this game.(and Dora and P51)  In fact I think it will be the fastest WW2 bird in the game.

[AG-51_Razor]

I would not rely on any published Real Life statistics on any on the planes in DCS to compare how they will match up in this sim. I would say that the only true measure of how they would stack up against one another would be to fly them in the game side by side and see how they match up. The RL stats were influenced by such factors as fuel load, ammunition loaded, instrument calibration, etc, etc, etc.

[yngvef]

I think there are too many variables to make any definite answer to this. You can compare top speeds, roll rates and g-limits till the cows come home, but it never tells the whole story.

Altitude is, as always, a very big factor.

I see some people compare the F4U-1D to the P-47, and while they have the same(ish) engine, the P-47s turbocharger will make it more and more dominant the higher you get. The P-47 was never famous for it's agility (except roll rate), but at high altitude it could overpower both the Fw-190 and Me-109 due to their lack of a turbo. (even though the Me-109 had a very well designed supercharger)

My gut feeling says that the F4U will benefit from its very high top speeds in low level fights against 190/109, making boom and zoom a likely effective strategy. At high level it's anybody's guess.

My other gut feeling is that they are close enough that it can go both ways, making it quite pilot dependent.

[Ala13_ManOWar]

46 minutes ago, yngvef said:

(even though the Me-109 had a very well designed supercharger)

Well, it was a thing at low altitude, but mostly it didn't after all. That's why they had to rely on MW50 mix to get some performance up high, and it wasn't enough at all. In my book that means it wasn't so well designed despite the effort made in the variable intake, it wasn't what they needed so we can be thankful to that "bad engineering" and lack of foresight. Making things overly complex doesn't mean it's good engineering, in fact a good engineering would be to make it the simplest possible while still able to do it's job.

 

To the OP question, you can hear by yourself,

 

[yngvef]

22 hours ago, Ala13_ManOWar said:

Well, it was a thing at low altitude, but mostly it didn't after all. That's why they had to rely on MW50 mix to get some performance up high, and it wasn't enough at all. In my book that means it wasn't so well designed despite the effort made in the variable intake, it wasn't what they needed so we can be thankful to that "bad engineering" and lack of foresight. Making things overly complex doesn't mean it's good engineering, in fact a good engineering would be to make it the simplest possible while still able to do it's job

Very true.

It would have been significantly better to have a two-stage supercharger like most american planes had early on as well as the Spitfire (from Mark IX onwards).

My point about the Me-109 supercharger being well designed was referring to the variable intake and the fact that it didn't suffer the normal drawbacks from throttling the engine that other superchargers did. It was a clever design, but as you point out, making clever things usually make them technically complicated, harder to maintain and expensive to manufacture.

In fact, I would argue that the germans made this mistake on a lot of their equipment. Some of it was very sophisticated, but not necessarily suited for the gritty conditions of war. Being good on paper or in ideal conditions won't help if it breaks down before even getting to the front (like the Panther tank for example)

And even if it was reliable, there is something called over-engineering as well: making something so fancy and exotic that it costs significantly more materials and money to manufacture. Like field radios in fancy wooden boxes that were polished and engraved to a quality making it look more like a musical instrument than something that will the thrown around in the mud. Sure, they were good quality, but at what cost?

One of the big mistakes the german airplane manufacturers made was ignore the need for high altitude performance. Except some late-war stuff that never reached mass production (Ta-152H-1 for example), they never were truly competitive at high altitudes. 

So, in DCS, I would try to pull the dogfight down to a lower level if I'm flying german planes. In my opinion, the biggest advantage the FW-190A-8 has is it's ridiculous firepower (though that is best vs bombers. You don't need all that to down a fighter and it only weighs you down)


Edit: I just need to mention that the video you linked is very good. That whole channel is very good for anyone wanting to get technical deep dives on warbirds.

Edited January 16, 2023 by yngvef

[Ala13_ManOWar]

12 minutes ago, yngvef said:

In fact, I would argue that the germans made this mistake on a lot of their equipment. Some of it was very sophisticated, but not necessarily suited for the gritty conditions of war. Being good on paper or in ideal conditions won't help if it breaks down before even getting to the front (like the Panther tank for example)

Exactly my point . But some to this day still gets amazed by the German propaganda. Go tell propaganda doesn't work .

[yngvef]

7 minutes ago, Ala13_ManOWar said:

Exactly my point . But some to this day still gets amazed by the German propaganda. Go tell propaganda doesn't work .

Haha. Yeah, I mostly included the point about the Me-109 supercharger being technically advanced as a protection against over-zealous wehraboos.