Bunches of things you didn't know about the Corsair

ArlyA · Mar 5, 2019

All weapons are systems and in order to be effective, we need to view them as such. Its not just the hours need to build the machine, but its and entire system that needs to be moved to the work, or in this case a battle front. Plus they needed to be serviced after they go into field, fueled and in the case of weapons, reloaded with something to fire at the enemy with. Your aircraft does nothing if you get it to location B, then you don't have any fuel or weapons to load onto it. The German's ME109 couldn't get as much HP out of its engine compared to an equivalent Allied AC because we were destroying there refineries left and right so there fuel quality (octane) suffered. Point is, you can't look at the magical "X weapon" without looking at how many hours it took to create it, how many people worked on it for years to get it perfected and resources used to get it inot the battle.

RSKY · Mar 5, 2019

I have read that the ME262 had an extremely short engine life, something like 20 hours of flight time as opposed to 200 hours for a U.S. V1650 engine and more for a radial. Even if they could have produced them in sufficient numbers the fuel and maintenance would have prevented them from being decisive.

Also once read that after the was the U.S. military did bombing surveys and came to the conclusion that the wrong targets were selected for destruction. If instead of concentrating on the ball-bearing manufacturing industry the Air Corps had targeted the fuel and electricity generating and distribution networks the war could have been drastically shortened.

In the long run, unless the Axis powers could develop nuclear weapons they were doomed to defeat because the US production capacity was out of range of attack and could outproduce the combined Axis powers all by itself. That is not counting the British/Commonwealth production which was also huge.

RSKY

Diggin It · Mar 5, 2019

I don't know .... the films made afterwards made a big deal about Ploesti and other refining centers. Who knows how historically accurate they were though.

They sure tried to bring it here and stop shipping to there. There are an awful lot of stories of U Boat activity within just a few miles of the US shoreline. And the Japanese balloon bombs that most history classes omit entirely. And of course there was that one Sunday.

ArlyA · Mar 5, 2019

The Japanese balloon bombing failed to do what they hoped to do. That is, start large forest fires that would tie up men and resources. Maybe this is why its not mentioned?

The U-boats in the Atlantic NA coast was somewhat effective, but for only so long, seems it was for about one year they became to costly. At the time, the USA had poor antisubmarine capability and tactics so it took time to get ramped up to do that job. In 1940, we had no coast guard at all!

Diggin It said:
I don't know .... the films made afterwards made a big deal about Ploesti and other refining centers. Who knows how historically accurate they were though.

They sure tried to bring it here and stop shipping to there. There are an awful lot of stories of U Boat activity within just a few miles of the US shoreline. And the Japanese balloon bombs that most history classes omit entirely. And of course there was that one Sunday.

bcp · Mar 5, 2019

Bruce

2LaneCruzer · Mar 5, 2019

bcp said:
View attachment 594598

Bruce

FWIW, another historical perspective on the air war in WWII. George Gobel was a fighter pilot; here's his story (starts at about the one minute mark).