4.11 F4U Performance

[IceFire]

Originally Posted by dpeters95

Actually, I was surprised also. I didn't think F4U's were used on any escort carriers except for transport. I have seen pictures of F4U's on an escort carrier but they were being moved to a land based airfield.

Yes, you're correct. The RN actually figured out by performing a sort of semi-circle (as opposed to a longer straight in approach) they could avoid the "Left Wing Stall" that the US pilots complained about when trying to land. Actually, I think there were more F4U's on RN carriers than on US carriers. The vast majority were used from land based airfields by the US Marine Corps.

Very interesting for sure!

I think it'd be an interesting direction to do a bit more work on the British Pacific Fleet operations in IL-2. A map of the Oil Refinery at Palembang, map of the area around Tokyo, a Firefly, a Ki-44, and Ki-48 and we could do most of the scenario. Oh and of course the RN escort carriers... but not all of them I guess because many of these would be US built and therefore owned by the infamous N-G... hopes dashed. Still we could do a lot with the main fleet carriers and the Corsairs we already have the FAA versions of the Corsairs.

[WTE_Galway]

Originally Posted by dpeters95

OK, well how about this making sense... The following is a list of British Pacific Fleet ESCORT CARRIERS that all contained F4u-1a squadrons:

HMS Slinger
HMS Arbiter
HMS Speaker
HMS Fencer
HMS Chaser
HMS Reaper
HMS Striker
HMS Ruler

They were all the same "class" of ship and their overall length was 492 feet 3 inches (150.04 m), pretty much the identical length (150 m) as the US Escort Carriers. I used the British carriers because the US carrier list was so long that it would have taken forever to trace down all the on board squadrons and their airplane compliment.

So that should make sense. I don't have all the spec sheets, etc., and I don't know what loads they carried, but those F4u-1A's could at a minimum fly off the Escort Carriers deck, ours currently can not...

The British F4Us were not identical to the US ones. Among other things they had about 20 cm clipped off the wings.


Note that these British ships were lend lease Bogue Class carriers fitted with catapults.

A random clip of F4Us corsairs taking off from a larger (non catapult) carrier ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SngBxtYFao

[MadBlaster]

yes, bring on the catapults. no more math.

[F19_Klunk]

Originally Posted by MadBlaster

yes, bring on the catapults. no more math.

thank you!!!! it IS so irrelevant. The decks could have been 50m....still being able to take off ..with catapults.. which WAS USED.. acceleration is a non-issue

EDIT:: well it is an issue.. I guess.. as we don't have catapults yet and we must be able to fly missions still

[sawyer692]

Originally Posted by F19_Klunk

thank you!!!! it IS so irrelevant. The decks could have been 50m....still being able to take off ..with catapults.. which WAS USED.. acceleration is a non-issue

EDIT:: well it is an issue.. I guess.. as we don't have catapults yet and we must be able to fly missions still

Seriously? You want to band-aid this issue with catapults? wow

[mmaruda]

There is already a mod activator for 4.11 so I decided to check it out with the new catapult mod (also beta). Unfortunately it doesn't work.

Anyway, since the mod community decided to stick to 4.10 for now, no unofficial solution can be expected any time soon.

So, all in favour of TD making a hotfix for working catapults?

Just to be clear. Apart from the training missions and custom missions/campaigns I haven't noticed any official Dgen stuff that would make it impossible to take of from the carrier, which for offline play on stock campaigns is ok, since you can fly a campaign with Navy planes and have fun (unless I am mistaken, if so please correct me). However, IL-2 is a simulator, so it should depict the real thing more or less. With Navy planes and small carriers it doesn't at the moment.

We are unable to reach a proof supported conclusion regarding aircraft performance here. The "porked FM" issue was raised time and again as long as the game exists and frankly speaking I'm tired of it. There will always be someone unhappy, because his fav plane is not as good in the game as his fav propaganda source says. This always leads to another patch having an overmodelled FM for some AC, because enough people shouted loud enough. Lets just leave it the way it is. The Corsair was mostly used by the US Marines for CAS missions, it does the job. The only thing that everyone here objectively agrees on, is that it's impossible to take off from smaller carriers. IMO catapults are the best solution, since they should be in the game to begin with and we already know it can be done.

Could anyone from TD kindly say if it would be possible in the near future (yes NEAR, remember the world end this year?).

[dpeters95]

Originally Posted by WTE_Galway

The British F4Us were not identical to the US ones. Among other things they had about 20 cm clipped off the wings.


Note that these British ships were lend lease Bogue Class carriers fitted with catapults.

A random clip of F4Us corsairs taking off from a larger (non catapult) carrier ...

That's great. You can really see the rounded off carrier approach that was used to defeat the "Left Wing Stall" problem.

You can also see that they are starting around the island which would be mid-shipish. I can't tell if they reach the end of the carrier from the angle but they all jump off regardless. None of them fall off the end. I know, I know, they are traveling at mach 1 with a 1oo mph headwind

[WTE_Galway]

Originally Posted by dpeters95

That's great. You can really see the rounded off carrier approach that was used to defeat the "Left Wing Stall" problem.

You can also see that they are starting around the island which would be mid-shipish. I can't tell if they reach the end of the carrier from the angle but they all jump off regardless. None of them fall off the end. I know, I know, they are traveling at mach 1 with a 1oo mph headwind

The carrier looks like either HMS Illustrious or HMS Formidable, either way much larger than an escort carrier and capable of 30 knots under way.

One other thing the video shows clearly is the clipped wings on the RAF variant of the F4U.