F4U and F6F Comparison CAG88/USS Yorktown

[Krupi]

Stumbled on a declassified report from the commanders of USS Yorktown which includes a comparison of the F4U (Labelled as the Goodyear built FG-1D) and the F6F. Some of the pros and cons took me by surprise.

I was under the impression that the F6F was generally thought of as the better carrier based aircraft but points C, D, E, and G make it seem like it wasn’t as clear cut as I had come to understand.

Points B, I, and J highlight the ruggedness and ease of maintenance of the Hellcat over the Corsair. Point F kind of contradicts Point E a bit in regards to wing spreading.

Link to the entire report…

http://www.mansell.com/Resources/special_files/FOLD3/Carrier Air Group 88 - Reports 1944-08-18to1945-10-25.pdf

Anyway thought it made some interesting points. I hadn’t heard anything about tail wheel failures on the Corsair before now, I guess it was an unfortunate issue that came about when they increased the length to improve forward visibility.

Point H also surprised me, I thought that the Hellcat beat the Corsair in terms of fuel consumption but this doesn’t seem to be true, however the Corsair only had 237 gal internally compared to the Hellcats 250 Gal.

Edited January 20 by Krupi

[Metrallaroja]

11 hours ago, Krupi said:

Stumbled on a declassified report from the commanders of USS Yorktown which includes a comparison of the F4U (Labelled as the Goodyear built FG-1D) and the F6F. Some of the pros and cons took me by surprise.

I was under the impression that the F6F was generally thought of as the better carrier based aircraft but points C, D, E, and G make it seem like it wasn’t as clear cut as I had come to understand.

Points B, I, and J highlight the ruggedness and ease of maintenance of the Hellcat over the Corsair. Point F kind of contradicts Point E a bit in regards to wing spreading.

Link to the entire report…

http://www.mansell.com/Resources/special_files/FOLD3/Carrier Air Group 88 - Reports 1944-08-18to1945-10-25.pdf

Anyway thought it made some interesting points. I hadn’t heard anything about tail wheel failures on the Corsair before now, I guess it was an unfortunate issue that came about when they increased the length to improve forward visibility.

Point H also surprised me, I thought that the Hellcat beat the Corsair in terms of fuel consumption but this doesn’t seem to be true, however the Corsair only had 237 gal internally compared to the Hellcats 250 Gal.

 

Nice find!
There is a lot of mithology about the corsair, like many things with WW2 one can only trust first hand sources instead of the same story copied from one book to the other.

After the first year operation with all the modifications made there was no doubt that the corsair was the better carrier aircraft.

Let alone in your document dated in 1945.

Edited January 20 by Metrallaroja

[Tzigy]

Great find, thx!!

[Gunfreak]

45 minutes ago, Metrallaroja said:

Nice find!
There is a lot of mithology about the corsair, like many things with WW2 one can only trust first hand sources instead of the same story copied from one book to the other.

After the first year operation with all the modifications made there was no doubt that the corsair was the better carrier aircraft.

Let alone in your document dated in 1945.

 

There's a reason the Corsair was used during the entire Korean War, while those few units still using F6Fs either quickly got Corsairs, Skyraiders or jets.

[Metrallaroja]

3 hours ago, Gunfreak said:

There's a reason the Corsair was used during the entire Korean War, while those few units still using F6Fs either quickly got Corsairs, Skyraiders or jets.

Yep

Spoiler

 

[Bozon]

On 1/20/2024 at 2:43 PM, Gunfreak said:

There's a reason the Corsair was used during the entire Korean War, while those few units still using F6Fs either quickly got Corsairs, Skyraiders or jets.

The reason for the above is that Grumman made the mistake of abandoning the F6F in favor of the F8 Bearcat. F6F served till the end of the war with only two day variants, the latter of which F6F-5 was not much different than the original 1943 one, performance wise. The bearcat on the other hand completely neglected fighter-bomber capabilities, which meant that after the war it quickly became obsolete as a fighter with no other roles to justify its continued service.

F6F was better than the Corsair in what mattered the most: being there when the battle happened! While the Corsair was still struggling to qualify for carriers and Vought were producing them slowly, Grumman were pumping out 600 carrier-capable Hellcats per month from a single factory to replace the F4F Wildcat as the primary USN fighter. The down side of that is that you don’t stop the production line for upgrades. Pumping out more Hellcats was more important than better Hellcats. In the end, it doesn’t matter how fast you fly or how tight your turn is when the battle happens without you.

[AG-51_Razor]

Bozon, there is no arguing with your statement that the Hellcat was there when the battle happened, which made it more significant however that doesn't make it the better fighter of the two. The fact that the Corsair carried on from late in WWII throughout the entire Korean War while the Navy relegated the Hellcat to the Training Command, Reserve squadrons and other yeoman duties, I believe is a fairly clear statement that the Corsair was the far better plane of the two. It was faster and was eventually capable of carrying far more ordinance.
This is not to denigrate the Hellcat at all. When the two planes came out of their experimental flight testing, the F6F was a far better CARRIER plane than the F4U and that is what the Navy needed at that time more than anything. One that the 3-400 hour nuggets could get aboard the carrier without much drama. Once the Corsair's teething problems were solved, it became more of a logistical issue of supporting it at sea where the Hellcat had already made a home for itself in the previous year aboard a rapidly growing fleet of CV's.

[Bozon]

@AG-51_Razor Sure, 1 vs 1 the Corsair was superior, no doubt. But here is the difference beween winning a duel to winning a war - Hellcats did not fight Corsairs, they both fought zeros. Once your fighter is superior to the enemy's you don't need an even more superior fighter - you need a larger number of fighters. Hellcats cost about 2/3 as much as a Corsair and Vought were  unable to produce Corsairs as fast as Grumman were producing Hellcats. So, it was easier to acquire Hellcats. When folded, Hellcats take less hangar space than Corsairs. Hellcats had less down hours than Corsairs, and were less prone to damage from deck operations that takes a lot of repair hours (or a complete write off).

On a carrier the number of operational fighters at any given moment is absolutely critical - you can't get more mid ocean to replace write-offs, you can't call reinforcement from another base. What you have available at the moement is what flies into battle. A Corsair is better than a Hellcat, but are 2 available Corsairs better than 3 available Hellcats when they are about to face Zeros? What about a Corsair + F4F Wildcat vs two Hellcats because you didn't get enough Corsairs to replace all your Wildcats before leaving?

Given enough time, especially post-WWII the Navy could equip the entire force with Corsairs. As I argued in the post above, Grumman have abandoned the F6F in favor of the F8F, so when F4U-4 & F4U-5 arrived the F6F-5 was left far behind, performace wise. F8F was a stellar performer, but a one dimentional interceptor, with no fighter-bomber capabilities. So post WWII and towards Korea F6F was obsolete and F8F was quickly made irrelevant. Douglas on the other hand had the right idea of the role that prop carrier planes could still perform in the early jet age, and Skyraider continued well into the jet age from Korea to Vietnam, with what was basically late WWII technology.

Edited January 27 by Bozon

[Krupi]

On 1/26/2024 at 12:52 PM, Bozon said:

The reason for the above is that Grumman made the mistake of abandoning the F6F in favor of the F8 Bearcat. F6F served till the end of the war with only two day variants, the latter of which F6F-5 was not much different than the original 1943 one, performance wise. The bearcat on the other hand completely neglected fighter-bomber capabilities, which meant that after the war it quickly became obsolete as a fighter with no other roles to justify its continued service.

F6F was better than the Corsair in what mattered the most: being there when the battle happened! While the Corsair was still struggling to qualify for carriers and Vought were producing them slowly, Grumman were pumping out 600 carrier-capable Hellcats per month from a single factory to replace the F4F Wildcat as the primary USN fighter. The down side of that is that you don’t stop the production line for upgrades. Pumping out more Hellcats was more important than better Hellcats. In the end, it doesn’t matter how fast you fly or how tight your turn is when the battle happens without you.

If you are going top talk about Being there when it happened, then the truth is that it wasn't the Hellcat or the Corsair. 

The real damage was done at the Battle of Midway and that means the Grumman F4F Wildcat, Grumman TBF Avenger and most importantly the Douglas SBD Dauntless. The importance of the loss of highly trained experienced Pilots cannot be understated.

After that it was the F4U in the Solomans, which importance is I think a bit underrated and the F6F at the Marians Turkey Shoot however as stated the damage was already done at the Battle of Midway.

P.S. I really hope we get a F4F someday, it was used well into 1945 with FM-2 version.

Edited January 27 by Krupi

[Gunfreak]

Let's face it, neither Hellcat or Corsair was needed. After Midway and even more importantly Guadalcanal. The Japanese Air arm was crippled. The Japanese pilots could bearly hold the their planes on course and almost none got carrier qualified after 1943.

The US could have just continued to use the SBDs and Wildcat and little would have changed strategically. A billion Wildcat and SBDs with well trained crew would still beat superior Japanese planes with mostly not even competent pilots. Would the US suffer slightly more casualties. Mabye and that was would be a tragedy for each family that lost a son or father or brother.

History however would mostly go unchanged. And the Wildcat did fly until the end of the war and continued to shoot down Japanese (and even German planes well into 1945) (Wildcat last victories in Europe was against 109Gs in March 45.)

Edited January 27 by Gunfreak

[Bozon]

I have no argument about the significance of the Wildcat and SBD, I absolutely agree, and the SBD is probably my favorite ”unlikely hero” of all time.

Back on track, there was never an argument whether to keep the Wildcat or get Hellcats/Corsairs. The latter two on the other hand were contemporaries and direct competitors. I consider the F4U a strong contender to the title of best land-based fighter of WWII.

It just seems like Vought built the best fighter they could - and then tried to force it to qualify for carriers. Grumman on the other hand built a masterpiece of design-for-purpose, a perfect balance of performance vs. requirements that included carriers operations at its core.

Giving the Hellcat to the Navy and Corsair to the Marines was the best decision to get the best out of both - in the grand scheme of things.

[Krupi]

I think the real unsung hero of the Pacific is the us navy submarines, the shear amount of military and transport/cargo they accounted for is impressive.

Edited January 27 by Krupi

[Gunfreak]

41 minutes ago, Krupi said:

I think the real unsung hero of the Pacific is the us navy submarines, the shear amount of military and transport/cargo they accounted for is impressive.

 

Not to mention all the pilots they saved. Sometimes in shallow harbours well within range of costal guns and sometimes even machine guns.

In one instance you had a float plane, and submarine inside a harbor picking up downed pilots. While artillery and machine guns peppered around them. Sinking the float plane so now this crew needed rescuing too.

Another time in another harbour, a pilot was floating in his dinghy. And the submarine had to ram into the dinghy with its periscope as it was too hot to surface. The pilot was afraid as the periscope came at him fast, so twice he dodged it. Finally on 3rd try the hooked him and dragged him out for well over an hour. The sub captain said. If you had dodged one more time. I would have surfaced and shot you myself.

Edited January 27 by Gunfreak

[Krupi]

Agreed together with the PBY Catalina, would love to have her in DCS. 
 

I read an article about some of her unusual quirks, apparently they had to raise the wing as it wasn’t high enough to avoid wave’s hitting the prop which meant that the centre of gravity was affected and if you pushed the throttle too quickly it had a tendency to nose down.

[Bozon]

9 hours ago, Gunfreak said:

 

… Finally on 3rd try the hooked him and dragged him out for well over an hour. The sub captain said. If you had dodged one more time. I would have surfaced and shot you myself.

Great story! I can only try to imagine how it looked…

I wonder how fast they were going…