Grumman engineers designed the Wildcat for use on aircraft carriers, a Grumman specialty. Its F3F biplane was the standard navy fighter before the war and a design influence on the Wildcat. The Wildcat, like all carrier-based planes (including the Zero), had to be built in such a way that allowed carrier pilots to cope with the difficult challenges presented by take-offs and landings on a tiny, tossing flight deck . Knowing this the Grumman designers, like their Japanese counterparts working on the Zero, gave the Wildcat great lift by situating the large wing very far forward on the fuselage. The high lift generated by the large wing area helped the pilot take off quickly and land slowly. It also made the Wildcat the most maneuverable aircraft flown by American pilots in 1942.
Like the Zero the Wildcat paid a penalty for its high lift: slower level speed. High lift, so necessary for low-speed performance, works against pure speed. The only way to compensate for this reality is to increase the power of the engine. Eventually this is what American designers did. When Grumman produced the Wildcat, however, the 1,200-horsepower Pratt and Whitney radial engine was the best available. Note that the Zero possessed even greater lift than did the Wildcat and mounted a somewhat smaller engine. The Zero, however, was nearly 1,600 pounds lighter, giving it a better power-to-weight ratio. Consequently at most altitudes the Zero was slightly faster than the Wildcat. The USN and Grumman, however, helped to even the odds somewhat by fitting the Pratt and Whitney engine with the first of what became the standard mechanically driven two-stage two-speed supercharger, thereby allowing the engine to keep its power up to a reasonable altitude. Like all the early-war fighters, however, the Wildcat was happier below 20,000 feet than above it.
Up to here, this general summary seems consistent with other sources and known facts about airplane performance.
Although the Wildcat was nimble for a U.S. warplane, it could not match the Zero’s outstanding flight characteristics in most spheres.
Here your source makes a transition from really general characteristics to the sort of contentless generalized assessment that has no value for evaluating the qualities of aircraft. See my previous post. There were many flight conditions in which the F4F was a more maneuverable airplane than the A6M. These occurred at high speeds. At all speeds the F4F had a higher roll rate. This meant that it was difficult for a trailing A6M to rapidly react to a radical maneuver by an F4F intended to change its vector. Erikson Schilling felt that roll rate was a more important characteristic when evaluating the maneuverability of aircraft, but then he was a P40 driver and so tended to combat he Japanese at higher speeds anyhow.
Without lecturing too much about flight dynamics, the higher roll rate of the F4F vis the A6M was a consequence of the greater HP of the F4F (apply the right hand rule from physics and keep in mind that the strength of the force vector is proportional to the thrust provided by the engine), and, perversely, the very large wing surface of the Zero (which was a liability in attempting to roll).
Marine and Navy pilots at the time did not, in general, hold the Wildcat in very high esteem. In the carrier engagements and early in the Guadalcanal campaign they felt outclassed when confronting the Zero.
I recommend that you consider Lundstrom's "The 1st Team at Guadalcanal" for a thorough picture of USN/USMC appraisal of the F4F. They held it in EXTREMELY high esteem and recognized that you had to fly to its strengths. Now to Thach:
In connection with the performance of the Zero fighter, any success we had against the Zero is not due to performance of the airplane we fly but is the result of the comparatively poor marksmanship on the part of the Japanese, stupid mistakes made by a few of their pilots and superior marksmanship and teamwork on the part of some of our pilots. This deficiency not only prevents our fighter [the F4F—EB] from properly carrying out its mission but it has had an alarming effect on the morale of the fighter pilots in the Fleet at this time and on those who are going to be sent to the Fleet.
This is an interesting quotation and very familiar to me for a variety of reasons. First, it flies in the face of Axis Fanboy propganda about the IJN operating both better planes and manning them with better pilots. Thach clearly felt that Japanese pilots had a lousy sense of teamwork, but were alos poorly trained in shooting (Lundstrom and others have in particular narrowed Thach's analysis to 'deflection shooting' because the USN/USMC trained at it heavily, whereas it was doctrinally underemphasized by the IJN). Then there's the remark about "mistakes on the part of a few pilots." I tend to ignore that, because many pilots lost their lives as a result of "mistakes."
The one consistent error made by Japanese pilots was to overshoot F4Fs when the latter decelerated or rolled. Japanese pilots then often compounded their error by looping up
too close to the F4F that they'd just overshot. The result was that a US pilot heavily trained in deflection shooting could hammer a vulnerable Japanese plane. I suspect that part of the Japanese error in this was the lack of knowledge about the F4F's .50 MG performance. The looping maneuver would seem less risky if your enemy is armed with rifle caliber .303s or low velocity cannons.
Now to Thach's general thrust. His opinion that you cite was solicited by Halsey, among others, because the US armaments industry was very "user friendly" with respect to retooling. At the time, Halsey and Thach thought that the USN was winning by a 3-4:1 kill ratio, based on 'verified' US pilot claims and knowledge of actual U.S. losses. This leaves one wondering why Thach and Halsey pulled such "long faces." The answer is that US op planners expected as a matter of course for the US to achieve BETTER THAN 3-4:1 kill ratios and were disappointed with the perceived results. (In actuality, when Thach wrote that summary, the kill ratio for USN pilots vs IJN pilots was about 1.6:1, and for USMC vs IJN pilots roughlty 1:1, so the situation was worse than Thach and Halsey realized at the time).
What's really remarkable is the attitude by the respective combatants. When the Japanese scored perceived 3:1 loss ratios they were ecstatic, because it "validated" their pilot training and procurements program. The Japanese conclusion was that nothing needed improvement. In contrast, the USN official response was that 3:1 favorable kill ratios were not nearly good enough, hence such training innovations as the USN advanced tactical fighter school.
Show me a fellow who rejects statistical analysis a priori and I'll show you a fellow who has no knowledge of statistics.
Didn't we have this conversation already?
