Opinion on Fighters that "Could Have" entered service earlier

[jakla1027]

Ok guys, as the title suggest, in your opinions what are some allied aircraft that could have entered service earlier in the war. Say (fictionally of course) aircraft companies/designers had pushed forward more plans/projects earlier on they're own intuitive. Or say the military had been given more freedom to plan/order new designs earlier. This is assuming the technical limitation of course, ie jet engines. I'm mainly looking at the late 1930's or 1940-41. (before Pearl Harbor) If designs/projects had been started 1-2 years earlier, what aircraft do you guys feel would have made it into service by December 1941 or mid 1942?

One example I can think of is the TBM/TBF Avenger. Had a little earlier planning been done, I feel like it could have been in service on carriers by Dec. 7th or at least fully equipping TB squadrons by Coral Sea/Midway. I'm just thinking that had the Navy had a little more freedom to plan during 1939-early 41 (bigger budget, less pacifism) it might have made into service earlier.

So what's your guys opinions of aircraft that could have made it into the war earlier?

[bartrat]

TBF Avenger was at Midway [land based]. Could it have entered service earlier. But how much earlier is a good question. If you are doing a what if then having more TBF production in say April/May/June '42 is IMHO reasonable.
For the Japanese I would say having the Nakajima L2D Tabby DC-3 earlier would be reasonable, perhaps as having some pre 12/1941 production.

[wdolson]

The TBF couldn't have entered service any earlier than it did. The 1938 fleet refit included specifications for a new fighter, dive bomber, and torpedo bomber. Only the torpedo bomber program was free of major problems and entered service on time: the TBF. The BS2C and F4U programs had major problems that delayed their introduction.

If the US had put more priority on filling domestic orders over foreign orders, they could have had more PBYs available at the start of the war, but the DEI would have gotten none. Same thing with the P-40, most P-40B and Cs went to the RAF and some of the early Es did too.

There wasn't much need for American manufacturers to take initiative after about 1938 because the military was serious about updating their aircraft and had all the manufacturers busy with new designs. The big limitation before 1940-42 was factory space. The US started building new aircraft factories, but they weren't available until well after Pearl Harbor.

There were a lot of Allied aircraft that were prioritized for Europe and were introduced to the Far East and PTO later than Europe. This includes the P-47 and P-51 as well as the Spitfire and Mosquito. B-26s were prioritized to Europe after early 1942 with the B-25 filling out medium bomber units in the Pacific. This was largely because the B-26 turned out to be ill suited to the field environments encountered in the Pacific.

Bill

[CaptBeefheart]

If you assume it had a bit better design from the beginning, then the F4U could have been around. Also, if someone had figured out putting a Merlin on a P-51 then a P-51B could have been possible, as the P-51 prototype flew in 1940.

Cheers,
CC

[oaltinyay]

ORIGINAL: bartrat

....
For the Japanese I would say having the Nakajima L2D Tabby DC-3 earlier would be reasonable, perhaps as having some pre 12/1941 production.

True but there are not much tranport units that can actually get re-equipped by the Tabby

[Mobeer]

Supermarine Spitfire - production was delayed for a few months by the construction of flying boats

Northrop P-61 Black Widow - in game at least, I use this as a day fighter, so without need for radar it could have been in service earlier, maybe 1941 (though not applicable in real life)

Gloster Meteor - development was protracted by a lack of belief in the jet engine, maybe 1943?

[wdolson]

The P-61 was a very complex aircraft and the program ran into a number of snags. Plus the first flight of the prototype wasn't until May 1942. Why anyone would have even considered a very expensive purpose built night fighter be deployed in the daytime role if radar wasn't available and lots of other day fighters were available is beyond me, but if it had been pushed into the field without radar, it couldn't have been deployed before late 43 or early 44 at the earliest. The radar wasn't really a big stumbling block in the program. They could have deployed it with an older radar set if necessary, though it would have looked odd with the external antennas of early radar sets.

Bill

[pelthunter]

ORIGINAL: Mobeer

Supermarine Spitfire - production was delayed for a few months by the construction of flying boats

Northrop P-61 Black Widow - in game at least, I use this as a day fighter, so without need for radar it could have been in service earlier, maybe 1941 (though not applicable in real life)

Gloster Meteor - development was protracted by a lack of belief in the jet engine, maybe 1943?

Wiki suggests that Spitfire production was delayed due that Castle Bromwich Factory leadership was both greedy and inept, with inadequate government oversight to boot. Factory management is quoted having ignored tooling and drawings from Supermarine, instead of using their own designs (!). It is also suggested that constant wages disagreements between management and workers was a major contributor to delays. Management apparently wanted cheapest possible labor force while Spitfire required skilled workforce to build.

On the Gloster Meteor part delays were attributed again to personal chemistries. " The W.2 was built under contract by the Rover Car Company in the early 1940s. Relations between Power Jets and Rover were somewhat strained and development of the W.2 was very slow. However, in late 1942, Rover agreed to exchange their jet engine factory at Barnoldswick, Lancashire for the Rolls-Royce Meteor tank engine factory in Nottingham, with no money changing hands. At the behest of the UK government, Rolls-Royce thereupon assumed control of the W.2 project, with Frank Whittle and his small team at Power Jets acting in an advisory capacity. [2] Together, they ironed out the problems with the W.2 and finally put the engine into mass production" -wiki Power Jets W.2

[jakla1027]

ORIGINAL: wdolson

Same thing with the P-40, most P-40B and Cs went to the RAF and some of the early Es did too.

Bill

Bill,

In your opinion, could have American experience (observing European air combat in 40-41) and planning been able to push forward the later models of the P-40's so they'd arrive earlier? Perhaps getting the P-40 F, L, and N models into production/service earlier? Say 6-12 months earlier? I've read where the N models went into production and service in 43-44, could they have been pushed forward to early to mid 42?

Thanks for your thought and input Bill[&o]

[crsutton]

ORIGINAL: wdolson

The P-61 was a very complex aircraft and the program ran into a number of snags. Plus the first flight of the prototype wasn't until May 1942. Why anyone would have even considered a very expensive purpose built night fighter be deployed in the daytime role if radar wasn't available and lots of other day fighters were available is beyond me, but if it had been pushed into the field without radar, it couldn't have been deployed before late 43 or early 44 at the earliest. The radar wasn't really a big stumbling block in the program. They could have deployed it with an older radar set if necessary, though it would have looked odd with the external antennas of early radar sets.

Bill

Yes, it would have been an expensive fighter bomber. No better than a bomb laden Jug with a hell of a lot more costs. Without radar, the plane would probably not have been developed as there was no role for it.

[bomccarthy]

Given the highly interactive nature of aircraft research, design, and manufacture, I don’t think the introduction of any particular aircraft in any country could have been accelerated. Research and design progresses in fits and starts; someone in research comes up with a nifty idea, designers examine it and find that a certain aspect doesn’t quite mesh with existing systems, so they work with the researchers to refine the idea. Then, during testing in the lab, another problem pops up and they have to go back to redesign a certain part, maybe multiple times. And finally, flight-testing reveals even more problems (some very serious) that need to be resolved before manufacturing can begin.

I think the notion that development could have been accelerated is rooted in the belief that throwing more money and resources at a project will inevitably move it towards it goal more quickly. If you asked the FoMoCo executives in charge winning Le Mans with the GT-40 program in the mid-1960s, they would have admitted that, sometimes, it just ain’t so.

Example 1 – P-51
The P-51 may have first flown in 1940, but the two-stage Merlin 60 series that made it a star, wasn’t ready for production until late 1941 (if I recall). Designed for a high-altitude version of the Wellington, the Merlin 60 went through a development period which required solving a number of problems, particularly cooling the intake charge with high manifold pressures. As it so happened, the high-altitude Wellington was eventually sidelined but the Merlin 60 series was shoehorned into the Spitfire V airframe in response to the FW 190 threat in 1941 – the result was the Spitfire IX in 1942. And even this was considered an interim solution, since the Spitfire V airframe was not considered adequate for handling the extra power of the Merlin 60 – the “real” solution was the Spitfire VIII (longer fuselage and larger vertical fin area). Design of the VIII began earlier, with the Merlin 60 in mind, but the RAF decided it needed something very quickly to combat the FW-190. Adapting the Merlin 60 to a brand new American prototype in 1941 would have been the last thing on RR’s to-do list.

Then you have production – in 1942, there weren’t enough Merlin 60s to equip both Spitfire IXs and P-51s. They could have stuck a single-stage Merlin in the P-51, but then you would just have something that performed a little better than the P-51A, but whose performance fell off drastically by 25,000 ft. They had to wait for RR to convey their information on the Merlin 60 to Packard, which then redesigned some components and processes to facilitate mass production (RR was still essentially hand-assembling Merlins).


Example 2 – F4U Corsair
The principle complaint concerning the Corsair was poor forward visibility over the nose during landing. Although a complaint with most single-engine fighters in the War (because of the size of 1,500-2,500 hp engines and their ever-growing superchargers), the Corsair was worse than most due to the location of its cockpit, behind the wing. Yet, the XF4U-1 prototype had its cockpit 3 feet forward of the production versions. What happened?

The prototype had integral wing fuel tanks – these were deemed too vulnerable to combat damage, so most of the fuel was moved to a single 237-gallon fuselage tank. In order to maintain the center of gravity within ¼ of the mean aerodynamic chord, the fuselage tank was placed in line with the wings, where the pilot currently sat. The fuselage was designed to be slim, so the cockpit had to be moved backwards, behind the fuel tank. From that point in the design, it took almost two years of fiddling with the height of the pilot’s seat and the canopy design, modifications (beginning in the field) to the main landing gear oleo strut rebound rates, adding a spoiler to the leading edge of the starboard wing to equalize the stall speed on both wings, and increasing the height of the tail wheel to get the Corsair to the point where most pilots were comfortable landing it on a carrier.

[wdolson]

There are a few examples where politics or bureaucracy interfered with aircraft production, but it was more common in Germany than anywhere else. The He-119 could have the standard nightfighter by mid-1944 but was delayed due to politics until it was too late.

Most of Japan's delays were due to engineering problems with their next gen engines and the drop in quality of their workers. Once the British and Americans committed to war there were few delays. Some upgrades were canceled or delayed to streamline production. Lockheed had a design for Merlin powered P-38s, but the disruption in production wasn't deemed worth it. It may also have been better to replace Allison production with Merlins, but the Allison was considered good enough for the planes it was going into.

Bill

[PaxMondo]

ORIGINAL: bomccarthy

Example 1 – P-51
The P-51 may have first flown in 1940, but the two-stage Merlin 60 series that made it a star, wasn’t ready for production until late 1941 (if I recall). Designed for a high-altitude version of the Wellington, the Merlin 60 went through a development period which required solving a number of problems, particularly cooling the intake charge with high manifold pressures. As it so happened, the high-altitude Wellington was eventually sidelined but the Merlin 60 series was shoehorned into the Spitfire V airframe in response to the FW 190 threat in 1941 – the result was the Spitfire IX in 1942. And even this was considered an interim solution, since the Spitfire V airframe was not considered adequate for handling the extra power of the Merlin 60 – the “real” solution was the Spitfire VIII (longer fuselage and larger vertical fin area). Design of the VIII began earlier, with the Merlin 60 in mind, but the RAF decided it needed something very quickly to combat the FW-190. Adapting the Merlin 60 to a brand new American prototype in 1941 would have been the last thing on RR’s to-do list.

Then you have production – in 1942, there weren’t enough Merlin 60s to equip both Spitfire IXs and P-51s. They could have stuck a single-stage Merlin in the P-51, but then you would just have something that performed a little better than the P-51A, but whose performance fell off drastically by 25,000 ft. They had to wait for RR to convey their information on the Merlin 60 to Packard, which then redesigned some components and processes to facilitate mass production (RR was still essentially hand-assembling Merlins).

Consistent with what I have read and heard 2nd hand: 41-42 the USA had a serious shortage of super and twin charger production capacity and was the gaiting item for most "modern" aircraft production. This got resolved in early '43 and ramped up throughout that year.
Based upon that, the P-39 would have been one of the few models that could have been ramped up in '42 and was one of the key reasons it was shipped to Russia ... it was all we could send.

[JeffroK]

The Grumman F5F-1 / P-50
http://www.joebaugher.com/usaf_fighters/p50.html

Would have been good IFF available Dec 41.

[CaptBeefheart]

ORIGINAL: JeffK

The Grumman F5F-1 / P-50
http://www.joebaugher.com/usaf_fighters/p50.html

Would have been good IFF available Dec 41.

ParadigmBlue put that one in the Focus Pacific scenario as the P-50 and it's available on Dec 7.

Cheers,
CC

[paradigmblue]

ORIGINAL: Commander Cody

ORIGINAL: JeffK

The Grumman F5F-1 / P-50
http://www.joebaugher.com/usaf_fighters/p50.html

Would have been good IFF available Dec 41.

ParadigmBlue put that one in the Focus Pacific scenario as the P-50 and it's available on Dec 7.

Cheers,
CC

Quick aside to do with Focus Pacific: It's added in stages - having a 424mph fighter on December 7th would be a bit much, so the version that is available at war's start doesn't live up to the estimated performance of the XP-50, and is more lightly armed than the planned centerline cannon and MGs. There are several upgrades, with the final version that actual lives up to the estimates being available late 43/early 44 if memory serves (I should check in the editor). In game it's still quite good, even in it's earlier models, as it brings range and good high-altitude performance to the allied OOB, albeit in limited numbers. I was worried about how badly this addition could upset a Pearl or Manilla raid, so the groups that use them arrive on December 8th.

[PaxMondo]

Again, this model required a twin charger which was not available in production numbers in '42. The total number of AC built in '42 was essentially based upon the twin charger supply (any performance AC that wanted to operate above say 15K ft). You can trade between models, but that is all you would have been able to do. And as Bill pointed out above, I truly believe that the US was doing everything possible to make that happen as fast as it could*. I doubt even with hindsight you would be able to trim more than 30 days from what they actually accomplished.

OF course, any mod can do anything they want. But the OP asked what 'could have' been done. Just laying the historical context of why what happened occurred.

*Twin chargers are the tightest tolerance part of the AC engine. Tooling fabrication, particularly in the 40's took a lot of time. Hand drawn engineering drawings, hand fabrication of the prototypes by master craftsmen, and then 'trial and error' to get the tolerances exact for all of the thermal expansion in all of the different vectors.** And then the shear number of sets of tools to produce the volume needed was staggering. This is the same portion of the AC engine that delayed ALL of the IJ Ha-4x engine models. The US did in 1 year what took the IJ 3 more years to get in place.

** And then each application (Aircraft) required a custom install due to cowling and intake/exhaust locations. P-51 and Spit merlin twin chargers are not exactly alike, close, but not exact. Those difference also had to be designed, tested, initially tooled, replicated into 100's of sets of tools to build the 1000's of engines actually built.

[Chickenboy]

Really surprised no one has mentioned the G-58 / F8F Bearcat yet. It filled a need for a better performance envelope than the F4F / FM-2 on CVEs, was based on existing technology (particularly the R-2800) and was foreseen several years earlier than it was deployed. It could have easily been pulled forward if the need had been seen as acute for its superb climb rate, high speed and short flight deck qualities.

[bomccarthy]

Design of the Bearcat started in 1943 and the Navy awarded the development contract to Grumman in Nov '43 without even requiring a full-scale mockup. The prototype made its first flight 10 months later. Prior to that, Grumman was focused on the Hellcat. I'm not sure how the Bearcat program could have been accelerated, particularly since it used a two-stage supercharger (in short supply until '43, as PaxMondo pointed out). The R-2800 supply situation was not helped when Sundstrand centerless grinders were diverted from P&W's new Kansas City plant to Napier's Sabre plant in the UK (P&W referred to the Sabre as "Britain's great white hope").

[wdolson]

Grumman considered a super Hellcat but didn't propose it to the Navy because it would have competed with the F8F. It would have had performance approaching the FG-2.

There was no perceived need for the F8F until 1943. The Long Island was an experiment without much of a real role when it was built. Then the Battle of the Atlantic demonstrated a need for air cover for convoys which led to the mass construction of CVEs. Initially CVEs were intended to escort convoys outside the range of most enemy aircraft. Most aircraft convoys encountered in the Atlantic were long range aircraft without fighter escort and Wildcats were completely suitable for that job.

Only when the idea came up to use CVEs to cover invasion TFs in the Pacific did Wildcats' obsolescence come to the fore. As a stopgap the FM-2 was built which gave the old Wildcat a bit more capability and then the F8F program was launched as a longer term solution.

The Navy didn't really realize it needed the F8F until shortly before the program started.

These things are so dependent on so many factors there are very few examples of aircraft that could have been realistically advanced.

Bill