The P-51’s laminar flow wing is more suitable for high Mach number operations than anything the navy had. The same wing design was used on the North American FJ-1 Fury.
It's not a laminar flow wing, it has laminar flow characteristics, however by definition it is not a laminar flow wing. It was still riveted skin etc which creates drag.
@@kiwidiesel North American Aviation covered the wings in special aerodynamic paste/lacquer to smooth out the wings. Due to this lacquer it made the finish of the wing not match the bare aluminum hull, hence why a lot of mustangs have wings that are painted silver to match the fuselage's finish instead of having true aluminum wings. (P51s that have bare aluminum wings are mostly ones that had their camouflage removed by ground crew after they were ordered to delete camo in order to save weight. And yes, weight savings is the reason why US aircraft deleted camo. On bombers it saved literally hundreds of pounds.) If you look at accurately restored mustangs you'll notice how smooth the wings are.
@@TheMagicalWizardPyro the RUclips channel US Bombers did a video about painted v unpainted and painted was actually faster an unpainted bomber needed more throttle to fly at the same speed.
The outline painting of the carrier deck onto the runway really puts the relative small size of a carrier flight deck into perspective. Kudos to all the naval aviators.
My folks moved into a house located under one of the primary landing patterns near NAS Oceana in '65 while I had a few more years of high school. I spent a lot of time watching Navy pilots in dozens of airframes doing touch & go practice on the carrier outlines on those runways. My dad had served on the Hornet CV-8 carrying Doolittle's B-25s to their launch, and years later on the Forrestal and the Intrepid. I was always fascinated by Navy aviation.
Once Iwo Jima was in American hands, they were able to base P-51 escort fighters from there to escort B-29's into Japan. While the Mariana islands were too far for the Mustangs to fly a round trip to Japan, Iwo Jima was in their range.
I consider myself a WW2/ general naval aviation buff, but I was today years old when I learned this nugget. Nice, quick and informative video. Thanks for posting, and learning me something new :)
There are a lot of different aircraft the Navy has tried to see if carrier landings were an option - even a C-130. We used to joke that if they ever figured out how to get a P-3 on deck, we were in serious trouble (and we weren't completely sure that they couldn't weld a tailhook on to the plane). I love the footage and the video - thanks.
A P-3 will fit if a C-130 will. The P-3 is longer, but has a shorter wingspan and weighs less. Not that any of that means it has room to take off from a carrier.
Interviews like this are gold, but always fact check this stuff. The Packard Merlin V-1650 as installed in the P-51D uses ethylene glycol/water mix 30/70 as coolant. This mix is not flammable. Pure Eth glycol is flammable, but much less so than avgas, of which they had 240,000 gallons on board. (feel free to fact check me as well)
But if they were going to store coolant, in order to preserve space on board they would have stored pure ethylene glycol and mixed it with water as needed.
@@luvr381When mixing ethylene glycol for coolant, distilled or deionized water should be used. Water from land based sources would contain chlorine. As ships always left with full water tanks, it would have been shore supplied.
@@peterk2455 Ships distill their own own water for their steam plant, as well as for drinking, cooking, and bathing. If the ships left port with all the water they needed, it would have to be chlorinated anyway for the same reason municipal water supplies are.
Well flammable or not, it doesn't change the fact that the carriers would have had to be refitted to store this additional coolant, which in the end just wasn't worth it.
Yeah I thought it wasn't flammable either, until I started working on natural gas pipeline engines. Get a leak in a coolant line and it starts spraying on the very hot turbo of a running Cat G3516, it will turn into a fireball.
Including the P-51 in the fleet would also have added another logistical tail to provide planes and parts, which is why the Navy was satisfied with leaving the Corsairs to the Marines in favor of the Hellcat, until the advent of kamikazes made the Corsair's better ability as an interceptor a necessity.
IIRC the Bearcat was a short ranged interceptor optimized for CAP against Kamikaze attacks. Versus the P-51D being a long range escort fighter. Very different aircraft requirements
Not at all. Actually with and without drop tanks, the Bearcat had the longer range but with drop tanks, this is reversed. But in almost all respect, the F8F out performs the Mustang. Generally speaking the F8F is faster, better climb, and more maneuverable. The gap in capabilities will vary with altitude but, overall, the Mustang is completely out classed. The F8F is quite literally the pinnacle of piston fighter design, it outperforms any other piston fighter ever in service and possibly in general. It could fight with WW2 era jet aircraft even if a bit slower. Its greatest downfall was that it came too late to see combat.
@@neurofiedyamato8763 ….. there was a lot of that happening. The Mustangs were gone after Korea. The Corsair stayed till 1958 (?). I think the last Spitfire was used into the 1950’s. The DeHavilland Mosquito outlasted all of them all. In the photo recon role
I believe the F7F Tigercat was what was intended for the Multi-Role Long Range Carrier Fighter. The F8F Bearcat was originally conceived as the small deck replacement for the FM-2 variants of the F4F Wildcats that were still in production up until June '45. The Escort Carriers used them as the Hellcats took up too much Hanger space and cut into the number of Avengers that could be carried. (And yes by late war in the western pacific they did start swapping Avengers for Hellcats on the CVE's. There was no longer much anti-ship and anti-sub need and the Hellcats could do double duty as ground support attack aircraft plus better Kamikaze protection). While the Navy loved the range of the P-51, they were never going to approve that liquid cooled engine for Navy/Marine use. Now this has me wondering. Given some of the weird experiments they did with trying to land other things on Carriers, did they ever try to adapt a P-47 to land on one? The Thunderbolt was for most practical purposes a Hellcat with a massive extra Supercharger.
Great info - I purchased a Titan 51D 3/4 scale mustang named "Sea Horse" complete with tail hook. The builder, Bill Graves was a Vietnam Naval Aviator who was thrilled to find a Mustang in Naval service. Thanks for putting up the video.
My understanding is that the Bearcat was strictly a point defense fighter intended primarily for deployment on escort carriers. Don't think it would have been considered an alternative to a Mustang for long-range escort duties.
That was my thought also as soon as this gentleman mentioned the Bearcat. The stellar climb performance of the Bearcat was achieved, in part, by leaving all the fuel on the ground.
I'm suspicious about the claim the F8F Bearcat was considered a carrier-based replacement for the P-51 in the escort fighter role. From what I've read, the F8F was designed for high top speed, rapid climb rate, and the ability to operate from escort carriers as well as Essex-class carriers. (Until the debut of the Bearcat, escort carriers were restricted to the Wildcat for fighter duties.) To meet these requirements the Bearcat design was kept as compact and light as possible. (8.61 meters long vs 10.24 long for the F6F Hellcat. Wingspan 10.92 vs 13.06 for the Hellcat.) These size restrictions limited internal fuel to under 185 gallons. (The P-51 carried 269 gallons internally.) These stats don't make sense in a long-range fighter.
Yeah from what I've read, the F8F was never meant to even get close to the range of the P-51. It was purely meant to launch from both escort and and fleet carriers as a extremely fighter to defend the fleet from air attacks and had a pretty small range compared most other WW2 fighters. The only reasonable answer I could think of for the claim that F8F took the role of a naval P-51 would be for the navy to distance themselves from the project.
He didn't say it was meant to take the role of the P-51. They already had several planes that could do the long range escort job of the P-51 (like the P-38 or the P-47) and they were stationed in the same place as the bombers: the airfields on the islands under US control. The P-51 had a much higher performance than the Wildcat or the Hellcat that were the primary fighters of the navy and they too were not long range escorts, just like the plane that was chosen as their replacement but never made it to combat because the war ended, the Bearcat.
@@jpteknoman I would contend that the bomber escort issue was solved by taking the Airfield at Iwo Jima. The p-51s from there had the range to do the escort missions.
Aesthetically one of the most Beautiful Aircraft ever produced! Hard to believe it could be so deadly in the right hands! Even the Germans were impressed!
@@skaldlouiscyphre2453 The Spit didn't have wing tanks so the Seafire variant wasn't hard to engineer. The Mustang does so a folding wing would not have been possible afaik. Edit- The Seafire had wing root tanks added but they didn't interfere with the folding of the wing.
@@dieselyeti I won't argue that. Although, the Mustang has such a long range even cutting it in half would still mean it's pretty average, rather than especially lacking in range. If the range was halved, it would still be better than any British, German or Soviet single-engine fighter. It's pretty shocking to compare the Mustang's range with most contemporaries. There's a few Japanese fighters that are comparable and not much else comes close.
Even so, the Corsairs were used by the Navy extensively throughout the Korean conflict, and I have heard very little about the Bearcat, apart from some very nice performance reports. Some factor must have influenced the USN in this choice?
The Bearcat was fighter, pure and simple. It was a small aircraft with a HUGE engine, with very little ground attack ability. The Corsair could do both, and most of the Corsair squadrons after the war were Marine, not Navy squadrons. The Marines trained close air support, the Navy not so much. So the Corsair ended up in Korea. Had the Bearcat entered service earlier, many of the Navy Hellcat squadrons would have transitioned to them. But it came too late, and everyone knew that the jets were coming. The Bearcats saw very limited service before the Jets arrived.
@@AtomicBuffalo I think you missed your mark, as this comment does not fit any comment of mine. The longevity and combat use of the Bearcat vs the Corsair?
Maintenance. Not sure people realize the amount of logistics to keep planes in the air. My Dad and Uncle were twins and maintained P51's in Europe. I have the daily squadron logs and its amazing how many were lost to accidents and maintenance issues. They had 3 primary pilots during the war. They never had a single mechanical abort the entire war. Their last pilot put My Uncle as crew chief in for a commendation. He was awarded the Medal of Honor. It boggles my mind how many mechanics were required for all the aircraft during the war. My Dad could fix just about anything.
One thing to consider about that narrow stall speed window was that it would only take a sudden 8-knot gust of tailwind or slack in the existing wind to knock it out of the sky. Those mild gusts are VERY much within typical carrier operating conditions. There was just no way without modifying the flaps to improve stall speed. Could I have seen them load up a ton of escort carriers with these things if they fixed the stall speed issue? Sure, as they're small enough and in large enough quantity to be tasked for specialized service. But it just wasn't needed.
Some valid reasons for not continuing with carrier trials and development of the Mustang into a ship-borne escort fighter. Still, it would have been very cool to have such a thing as a USN F51F Seahorse, for real...
Mustang has a "laminar flow wing" type design which doesn't give lift unless it's going fast, so it requires higher speed to avoid a stall. This is another reason why it isn't suitable for carrier landings, as compared with planes with conventional high lift wing designs. But in the right role and conditions (e.g. high altitude fuel savings and speed based dog fighting), the Mustang was a superior aircraft in many respects.
@@michaelpielorz9283 NO need to be rude. Not EVERY wing is actually capable of Laminar flow, Laminar is just ONE type of airfoil dynamic achieved with optimal characteristics for speed and smooth flow of air. "things like ripples, wrinkles, rivet heads, bugs, small imperfections in shape, waves in the wing - all prevent laminar flow. Worse, many of these imperfections can be invisible in casual inspection by observers, and prevent laminar flow." Only certain wings get to be called "Laminar". But hey, it's only RUclips, not a technical journal.
The Army Air Corps pilot complained that the test of the Mustang had it landing at a speed 8 knots above the stall speed. That comment explains the difference between (AAC/USAF) pilots and Navy Carrier pilots who would consider landing at 8 knots above the stall speed as easy peasy. The S-2E I flew in the late '60s off the USS Randolph CVS-15 and USS Yorktown CVS-10, by design landed at the stall speed (95 Knots for both). One of the reasons you will not the nose high attitude of Naval Aircraft is they are landing at or slightly above the stall speed. That area on the flight characteristic curve at which the aircraft is flying below the stall speed and at high power is called the backside of the power curve. The USAF position is to ignore that area and stay out of it. The Naval Aviators that are carrier based are trained how to handle that situation and understand it. The is a food video on YT about a C-2A Greyhound that got a cold cat shot and went off the flight deck at below stall speed. The flight crew saved the airplane and all the people aboard because they did not panic and raise the nose (wrong response) instead they cleaned up the aircraft (reducing drag) and lowered the nose to build up airspeed. All well within less than 100' of the ocean. The tactical height of an S-2 tracking and prosecuting a sub contact and at times be as low as 25' above the ocean. Flew that many times, even when heading toward a ship when we had to climb above 100' to clear the supperstructure and then drop back down to 25' on the other side. This is one of the reasons we had radar altimiters on the plane. You couldn't trust the analog altimitiers.
Thanks for the research and also for editing together the two posts. It's a good thing to test & determine whether an aircraft already in use in theater in great numbers, can be applied to other critical roles. What jumps out at me here is that the Navy gathered a team thoroughly familiar with the aircraft' strengths and weaknesses for carrier deployment, and were able to frame the issues within the wider context of the war effort, along with a pilot who could fly the airframe and evaluate performance objectively, seemingly without a pile of politics distorting the entire process. Maybe some of that is only seen in the rearview mirror. But even considering the inevitable politics and waste of waging war, it seems like the US in that period was far more able to focus on essentials than any moment since.
I think the decision to take the island Iwo Jima a few months later solved the issue. Mustangs based there could do the escort mission. And the Bearcat was already available as a shipboard interceptor.
Please please have an episode where you deal with the B-25J Navy version landing on the Shangri-La I find that to be most interesting to me and a bunch of other people in the firebombers Wildfire bombers category enthusiasts
I don't see why they bothered with the Mustang, other than just to check it out. The Corsair had as much, if not more range than the Mustang, and they already had them in the Pacific. They could have easily done that job.
@@luvr381 I see 2140 for the F4U-1 on the official paperwork, with one external tank. I see 2190 for a P51D with external tanks. That's virtually identical. Of course this is just cruising, it doesn't account for loiter time over the target and how much fuel might be used in combat, so neither plane could really fly anywhere close to these ranges in a real life combat mission. But there's simply not much difference in the two, and the Corsair is the better dogfighter and much more durable plane, so other than just checking the Mustang out, I suspect these reasons are why the Navy didn't pursue this any further.
Well, that other Merlin powered WW2 champion, the Spitfire (sorry, Seafire) did do sterling service on board British carriers. But those Brits were already accustomed to liquid cooled engines in their operations
The Seafire was a pretty lousy handling carrier fighter. Mustang would have had the same issues of poor visibility for deck landing. The stall speed would be an issue as well.
Yes, you are correct, the Spitfire/Seafire was a " best of the worst" for carrier operations, as far as the inline liquid cooled engines, the Fleet Air Arm had already been using the Fairy Fulmar and later on the Sea Hurricane, Barracuda and Fairy Firefly. All of those aircraft had wide track undercarriage except the Barracuda. The Seafire was pretty dire for carrier operations, but it filled a gap until the arrival of the Grumman F4F's and F6F's.
@@neilfoster814 However, as I understand it, becáuse of the Seafire, they were able to tame the Beast: F4U Corsair for the Americans, which later went on to be a stallward for the marines(?) on the decks.
@@keesvandenbroek331 Corsair with both Navy and Marines together, in eventual carrier deck use. (As is seen still today in US carrier airwings, which all include one USMC squadron flying the same fighter/attack model as their USN shipmates). The reason the F4U got famously associated with the Marines first, was because they were able to immediately use it in its original early configuration from island land bases, to devastatingly good effect, well before the carrier-suitability fixes/upgrades had been done to the later-war models.
It was Ethylene Glycol, which is flammable. Later models of the Merlin used a water/glycol mix, but you’re still storing pure Glycol on the ship - it’s a fire hazard.
@@hotrodray6802 Really dude? The carrier had secure storage for AvGas with inert gas purging systems etc. They did not have storage tanks for glycol, which made it a problem…like the man said in the video. SMDH at people who lack fundamental knowledge yet think everybody else is being dumb! 🙄
@@jacksons1010 Can you provide some documentation of that ? I have never heard of glycol being flammable. Also, I'm fairly certain that all wartime Merlin engines used water/glycol mix.
I have no audio. I checked my device; the error is not mine. From your transcript, at 1:03, the presentation mentions a "catapult hook". I understand that US Navy WW2 aircraft carriers had no catapult to launch aircraft. Please clarify. Later, the narrative makes comparisons between a navalised North American Aviation P-51 Mustang Long-Range Fighter and the Grumman F-8F Bearcat USN Carrier-Based Interceptor. My thinking would be the Chance Vought F4U-4 Corsair USN Carrier-Based Fighter for its greater all round flexibility would have been a far better choice than either. Could one knowledgeable of the topic I raise provide substantive constructive feedback, please?
It's definitely not a carrier aircraft. I also believe the engine maintenance would have been more difficult. Radial engines were much simpler to maintain.
😆😆😆Outstanding Video. If it can be believed Eric "Winkle" Brown cut his stall margins even closer when landing his Mossie on a carrier deck. And the Herc pilot that landed and rotated his C-130 from a flat-top was no slouch either..."LOOK MOM NO HOOK"
He had help of a co pilot and the success was the reversible props on the C130 as they came over the stern of the ship and full throttle and they stopped !! !
@@wilburfinnigan2142 Agreed...Thats how they did it. I think he started reversing his props 100 yards out, before they touched down. Still off da hook tho. No pun intended. Most people lose it when thety find out they didnt use RATO or JATO for takeoff either.
Not a crazy story at all. But you showed Elder as a navy pilot but yet the photo showed him in a army uniform and the coolant was not flammable either. The F-8F Bearcat didn’t enter service with VF-19 until after the war
Actually that's part of the reason for the invasion Iwo Jima. The Airfield was used as an emergency B-29 base. And had an entire Fighter Group of long-range P-51 doing the escort mission.
Overall, nicely done. But 2:15 THOSE ARE NOT B-29s! 3:05 I don't know who that is in a USAF uniform BUT IT'S NOT BOB ELDER! I was fortunate to know Bob well. Widely acknowledged as one of the finest aviators of his era. Often overlooked: his former Bombing Squadron 3 squadronmate, Sid Bottomley, flew the PBJ (navy B-25) carrier tests at the same time.
I guess the Mustang P-51 was not designed for the carrier. I am having trouble understanding the stall issue with the P-51. I remember hearing Navy Wildcat & Hellcat pilots say that carrier landing is a controlled crash. The engine speed is lowered to the point where the aircraft just fall onto the deck of the ship. Isn't that equivalent to stalling the engine to the point where there is no lift and the aircraft just drop onto the carrier deck? Maybe not. British pilots who flew the carrier version of the Spitfire say that the carrier Spitfire was not made for carrier landing. Many carrier version of the Spitfire were damaged while landing onto the carrier deck. They felt that the Grunman Wildcat & Hellcat were better at carrier landing. Could it be for the same reason? One of the narrator highlighted the coolant of the P-51 was flammable. And flammable coolant is not compatible with ships. Yes, but isn't aviation fuel flammable. Do aircraft carriers have aviation fuel on board? I think carriers do have aviation fuel stored for their warplanes, so there is flammable liquids on carriers. Though a damaged air-cooled radial engine can continue to function and make it back to their home carriers. Whereas a liquid-cooled inline engine is more likely to overheat and not make it back to their home carrier. With that said I thought P-51 fighters did escort and protect B-29 bombers over Japan in the Pacific theatre. I am not sure if that really happened since P-51 fighters could not be used on carriers.
With all the fires on Carriers being so devastating, adding antifreeze that has a flashpoint so low that a hot day in the Pacific might mean fires on deck from puddles of antifreeze cooking off was the big issue. Another is, Naval aircraft are built tougher because the deck landing is totally unforgiving. Mustangs were designed to land on concrete, turf, or dirt runways. Trust me on this, 20 years in the Air Navy and standing on concrete is easier on your feet than standing on a flight deck made with up to 30 inches of armor plate. Hell, my first workup working flight deck was when I found out government issue flight deck boots NEEDED sneaker insoles.... my feet were so bruised, looked like a damn x-ray of my feet.
Is that an 'internet video game navy aircraft carrier deck' with 30" of armor under your 'internet video game feet'? Because no ship of any navy anywhere in the world had or has 30" of armor, ever.
To begin with, there's physically no realistic way to mount a tailhook at all on a P-38, just due to the twin-boom configuration. So pretty much ruled out right from the start. ... [[ *Edit* ~~ Well, before posting, I reconsidered my assertion about tailhook incompatibility on a fork-tail for a minute, upon sudden recollection of De Havilland's Sea Venom and Sea Vixen designs. These both were of "twin-boom" configuration, vaguely (but I do mean, only "vaguely") similar to the P-38. But the P-38's center/cockpit pod/fuselage, basically goes no further aft than the trailing edge of the wing, whereas the Venom and Vixen both have enough fuselage length+mass much farther behind the main landing gear, to allow the tailhook to trail well behind the wheelbase. For a tailhook to really work well, the "hook" part really can't be in the same fore-and-aft vicinity as the main wheels. I won't go into a tedious attempt at explaining the geometrical/functional issues at stake. But long story short... Despite these other viable examples of Twin-boom+Tailhook carrier aircraft, I'll still stand pretty confidently with my initial reaction: that a P-38 tailhook would be unworkable without some sort of major mods to the length/shape/size of the center fuselage pod, which would be substantial enough to cause significant aerodynamic headaches (even above and beyond the notorious existing compressibility/"flutter" issue that haunted the Lightning, which was never really solved), necessitating what would have amounted to a prohibitively major redesign. ~~ ]] ... Even aside from that, having heard of occasional instances where the whole airframe of a P-38 got warped out of shape just from some violent level of dogfight maneuvering from a particularly aggressive pilot... makes me pretty sure that airframe was inherently "fragile" enough that it would not have endured carrier landings without damage. (And I mean the P-38's whole structure overall, let alone the landing gear specifically being inevitably too weak on basically ALL aircraft that have ever been "converted" to carrier use.) Incidentally, airframe stress/damage was exactly the issue with early models of the F7F Tigercat on carrier trials, which delayed its introduction until various structure had been beefed up on the later versions. (This delay rendered the F7F effectively obsolescent at least for carrier use, upon the contemporaneous introduction of the more quickly-developed F8F Bearcat, which was itself also too late for the war, as well as eclipsed by the dawning Jet Age.) And all this was from the one company that were already known as THE long-standing experts on notoriously strong carrier airframes: the "Grumman Iron Works".
So the F8F Bearcat could outfly the Mustang? I always thought the Mustang was the pinnacle of ally fighter planes in WWII. The FW-109 in certain variations and good fuel is the only non-jet that could give the Mustang real problems. The Spitfire of course was great, but that’s where the Mustang sourced it’s power so it ain’t too fair to compare the two since the Spitfire in many ways was the testbed for allied alpha fighter technologies.
I agree with the Navy pilots. The Mustang was not the correct solution. After reading and watching documentation on the Mustang… it had a pretty dismal time surviving ground fire. Truth is, other than fleet defense interceptors.. all fighters need to carry bombs and deliver them ..with a risk of bullets and flak hitting at least a few aircraft every mission. At that time…. I would have chosen the Corsair over any other Naval aircraft and would have chosen the P-47D over any land based aircraft because they spent a large percentage of their missions shooting anything they could find on the ground. In Korea the P-51’s loss rate was so high that the Army’s leaders in theater begged the military leaders in Washington to send P-47’s from Europe, the P-51 was quickly retired in Europe while the P-47’s were kept due to their phenomenal record at the end of the war both dogfighting but more importantly as a ground attack. As for the Navy… the new Corsairs had the same range as the Mustang, just a little under 1100 miles (depending on who you read or ask)
Anytime you get a high performance aircraft with a higher top speed the stall speed goes up also. general facts of physics, and the P51 Mustangs had a higher stall speed than the slower navy fighters, even the F4U Corsair had problems with higher stall speed and the left wing stalled before the right, causing many crashes untill they added a stall device to the right wing, and they had to land them at a higher speed !!! not all was rosy !! !
The P-51 has a laminar flow wing which is more unforgiving at speeds close to stall.
John!!! Thanks for commenting!
The P-51’s laminar flow wing is more suitable for high Mach number operations than anything the navy had.
The same wing design was used on the North American FJ-1 Fury.
It's not a laminar flow wing, it has laminar flow characteristics, however by definition it is not a laminar flow wing. It was still riveted skin etc which creates drag.
@@kiwidiesel North American Aviation covered the wings in special aerodynamic paste/lacquer to smooth out the wings.
Due to this lacquer it made the finish of the wing not match the bare aluminum hull, hence why a lot of mustangs have wings that are painted silver to match the fuselage's finish instead of having true aluminum wings. (P51s that have bare aluminum wings are mostly ones that had their camouflage removed by ground crew after they were ordered to delete camo in order to save weight. And yes, weight savings is the reason why US aircraft deleted camo. On bombers it saved literally hundreds of pounds.)
If you look at accurately restored mustangs you'll notice how smooth the wings are.
@@TheMagicalWizardPyro the RUclips channel US Bombers did a video about painted v unpainted and painted was actually faster an unpainted bomber needed more throttle to fly at the same speed.
The outline painting of the carrier deck onto the runway really puts the relative small size of a carrier flight deck into perspective. Kudos to all the naval aviators.
Imagine a B25 doing the same thing !!!
My folks moved into a house located under one of the primary landing patterns near NAS Oceana in '65 while I had a few more years of high school. I spent a lot of time watching Navy pilots in dozens of airframes doing touch & go practice on the carrier outlines on those runways.
My dad had served on the Hornet CV-8 carrying Doolittle's B-25s to their launch, and years later on the Forrestal and the Intrepid. I was always fascinated by Navy aviation.
they had some really valid points for not using the Mustang, another great clip Ken.
Thank you, Ed!
Once Iwo Jima was in American hands, they were able to base P-51 escort fighters from there to escort B-29's into Japan. While the Mariana islands were too far for the Mustangs to fly a round trip to Japan, Iwo Jima was in their range.
I consider myself a WW2/ general naval aviation buff, but I was today years old when I learned this nugget. Nice, quick and informative video. Thanks for posting, and learning me something new :)
There are a lot of different aircraft the Navy has tried to see if carrier landings were an option - even a C-130. We used to joke that if they ever figured out how to get a P-3 on deck, we were in serious trouble (and we weren't completely sure that they couldn't weld a tailhook on to the plane). I love the footage and the video - thanks.
Glad you enjoyed it, Michael. Thanks for watching!
A P-3 will fit if a C-130 will. The P-3 is longer, but has a shorter wingspan and weighs less. Not that any of that means it has room to take off from a carrier.
Umm… wingspan?
@@Frankie5Angels150 They managed to land a C-130 on the deck (132 ft wingspan), they can fit a P-3 (99 ft wingspan).
Interviews like this are gold, but always fact check this stuff. The Packard Merlin V-1650 as installed in the P-51D uses ethylene glycol/water mix 30/70 as coolant. This mix is not flammable. Pure Eth glycol is flammable, but much less so than avgas, of which they had 240,000 gallons on board. (feel free to fact check me as well)
But if they were going to store coolant, in order to preserve space on board they would have stored pure ethylene glycol and mixed it with water as needed.
@@luvr381When mixing ethylene glycol for coolant, distilled or deionized water should be used. Water from land based sources would contain chlorine. As ships always left with full water tanks, it would have been shore supplied.
@@peterk2455 Ships distill their own own water for their steam plant, as well as for drinking, cooking, and bathing. If the ships left port with all the water they needed, it would have to be chlorinated anyway for the same reason municipal water supplies are.
Well flammable or not, it doesn't change the fact that the carriers would have had to be refitted to store this additional coolant, which in the end just wasn't worth it.
Yeah I thought it wasn't flammable either, until I started working on natural gas pipeline engines. Get a leak in a coolant line and it starts spraying on the very hot turbo of a running Cat G3516, it will turn into a fireball.
Including the P-51 in the fleet would also have added another logistical tail to provide planes and parts, which is why the Navy was satisfied with leaving the Corsairs to the Marines in favor of the Hellcat, until the advent of kamikazes made the Corsair's better ability as an interceptor a necessity.
IIRC the Bearcat was a short ranged interceptor optimized for CAP against Kamikaze attacks. Versus the P-51D being a long range escort fighter. Very different aircraft requirements
Not at all. Actually with and without drop tanks, the Bearcat had the longer range but with drop tanks, this is reversed. But in almost all respect, the F8F out performs the Mustang. Generally speaking the F8F is faster, better climb, and more maneuverable. The gap in capabilities will vary with altitude but, overall, the Mustang is completely out classed.
The F8F is quite literally the pinnacle of piston fighter design, it outperforms any other piston fighter ever in service and possibly in general. It could fight with WW2 era jet aircraft even if a bit slower. Its greatest downfall was that it came too late to see combat.
@@neurofiedyamato8763 ….. there was a lot of that happening. The Mustangs were gone after Korea. The Corsair stayed till 1958 (?). I think the last Spitfire was used into the 1950’s. The DeHavilland Mosquito outlasted all of them all. In the photo recon role
@@neurofiedyamato8763 Supermarine Spiteful has entered chat
@@neurofiedyamato8763 the bearcat and the sea fury. .
I believe the F7F Tigercat was what was intended for the Multi-Role Long Range Carrier Fighter. The F8F Bearcat was originally conceived as the small deck replacement for the FM-2 variants of the F4F Wildcats that were still in production up until June '45. The Escort Carriers used them as the Hellcats took up too much Hanger space and cut into the number of Avengers that could be carried. (And yes by late war in the western pacific they did start swapping Avengers for Hellcats on the CVE's. There was no longer much anti-ship and anti-sub need and the Hellcats could do double duty as ground support attack aircraft plus better Kamikaze protection).
While the Navy loved the range of the P-51, they were never going to approve that liquid cooled engine for Navy/Marine use. Now this has me wondering. Given some of the weird experiments they did with trying to land other things on Carriers, did they ever try to adapt a P-47 to land on one? The Thunderbolt was for most practical purposes a Hellcat with a massive extra Supercharger.
Great info - I purchased a Titan 51D 3/4 scale mustang named "Sea Horse" complete with tail hook. The builder, Bill Graves was a Vietnam Naval Aviator who was thrilled to find a Mustang in Naval service. Thanks for putting up the video.
The Bearcat would have dominated the skies of Japan had it saw combat. Love that plane.
BUT tooo little toooo late !!!!
And the Skyraider and the Tigercat
All too late
@@ironroad18...Skyraider first thing I thought of. My dream aircraft to own.
For the first time in a long time I've learnt something new about the Mustang. Thanks for the video
Its old info I have known of the trials for decades !!!
Fantastic story.
I never heard about this and I'm glad you posted this.
And frequently on carriers that were a fraction of the size of their US counterparts.
Flying The info on the Navy trying the P51 is old info I have know of that for decades. see P51 Mustangs in actions, an old book and its mentioned !!
My understanding is that the Bearcat was strictly a point defense fighter intended primarily for deployment on escort carriers. Don't think it would have been considered an alternative to a Mustang for long-range escort duties.
That was my thought also as soon as this gentleman mentioned the Bearcat. The stellar climb performance of the Bearcat was achieved, in part, by leaving all the fuel on the ground.
The navy had a better point defense fighter in the works - the Ryan FR Fireball.
It was already in carrier service in early 1945.
TRUE... it was light and high powered for quick climbs but range suffered bad and it was not as fast as a Mustang !!!
@@fantabuloussnuffaluffagus absolutely !!!
Wow! This is the first time I had ever heard of this project.
I'm suspicious about the claim the F8F Bearcat was considered a carrier-based replacement for the P-51 in the escort fighter role. From what I've read, the F8F was designed for high top speed, rapid climb rate, and the ability to operate from escort carriers as well as Essex-class carriers. (Until the debut of the Bearcat, escort carriers were restricted to the Wildcat for fighter duties.) To meet these requirements the Bearcat design was kept as compact and light as possible. (8.61 meters long vs 10.24 long for the F6F Hellcat. Wingspan 10.92 vs 13.06 for the Hellcat.) These size restrictions limited internal fuel to under 185 gallons. (The P-51 carried 269 gallons internally.) These stats don't make sense in a long-range fighter.
Yeah from what I've read, the F8F was never meant to even get close to the range of the P-51. It was purely meant to launch from both escort and and fleet carriers as a extremely fighter to defend the fleet from air attacks and had a pretty small range compared most other WW2 fighters. The only reasonable answer I could think of for the claim that F8F took the role of a naval P-51 would be for the navy to distance themselves from the project.
He didn't say it was meant to take the role of the P-51. They already had several planes that could do the long range escort job of the P-51 (like the P-38 or the P-47) and they were stationed in the same place as the bombers: the airfields on the islands under US control. The P-51 had a much higher performance than the Wildcat or the Hellcat that were the primary fighters of the navy and they too were not long range escorts, just like the plane that was chosen as their replacement but never made it to combat because the war ended, the Bearcat.
I think the better answer is Iwo Jima. It was decided to take the island to provide a base for escort Fighters.
@@Joe-yz3uf I think the real answer is Iwo Jima. It was decided to take the island and use that as a base for escort Fighters.
@@jpteknoman I would contend that the bomber escort issue was solved by taking the Airfield at Iwo Jima. The p-51s from there had the range to do the escort missions.
Aesthetically one of the most Beautiful Aircraft ever produced! Hard to believe it could be so deadly in the right hands! Even the Germans were impressed!
Now here's something I didn't know. Thank you very much. 👍
Captain Eric 'Winkle' Brown carried out a number of landings on RN aircraft carriers, using unlikely aircraft.
The legend!
@@kevvoo1967 Hahahahahahahahahah Legend ?????
I'd think the Mustang's non-folding wing might have been a consideration, limiting how many a/c could deploy on board.
There's no reason folding wings couldn't be implemented. Keep in mind, Seafires had folding wings despite Spitfires lacking them (for example).
@@skaldlouiscyphre2453 The Spit didn't have wing tanks so the Seafire variant wasn't hard to engineer. The Mustang does so a folding wing would not have been possible afaik.
Edit- The Seafire had wing root tanks added but they didn't interfere with the folding of the wing.
@@dieselyeti You might end up losing some wing tank space, but the Mustang has lots of fuel capacity so it might be worth it.
@@skaldlouiscyphre2453 Even with adding wing root tanks the capacity would be hugely reduced though.
@@dieselyeti I won't argue that. Although, the Mustang has such a long range even cutting it in half would still mean it's pretty average, rather than especially lacking in range. If the range was halved, it would still be better than any British, German or Soviet single-engine fighter.
It's pretty shocking to compare the Mustang's range with most contemporaries. There's a few Japanese fighters that are comparable and not much else comes close.
Even so, the Corsairs were used by the Navy extensively throughout the Korean conflict, and I have heard very little about the Bearcat, apart from some very nice performance reports. Some factor must have influenced the USN in this choice?
(original withdrawn; misunderstood context)
The Bearcat was fighter, pure and simple. It was a small aircraft with a HUGE engine, with very little ground attack ability. The Corsair could do both, and most of the Corsair squadrons after the war were Marine, not Navy squadrons. The Marines trained close air support, the Navy not so much. So the Corsair ended up in Korea.
Had the Bearcat entered service earlier, many of the Navy Hellcat squadrons would have transitioned to them. But it came too late, and everyone knew that the jets were coming. The Bearcats saw very limited service before the Jets arrived.
The Bearcat was intended as a very fast climbing interceptor. And by the time it ended service, the first Jets were coming.
@@AtomicBuffalo I think you missed your mark, as this comment does not fit any comment of mine. The longevity and combat use of the Bearcat vs the Corsair?
My father flew P51 B's, C's, & D's bomber escort out of RAF Bodney. But never on/off the deck of an aircraft carrier!!
Very nice to hear about it! Sometimes, two great ideas simply don’t match, as in this case with an efficient ship design and a marvellous airplane.
"Seahorse" as a Mustang fan...I LOVE it!
Excellent video, thanks.
I cannot imagine the ease of performing maintenance on the P51 in a shopboard environment.
Maintenance. Not sure people realize the amount of logistics to keep planes in the air. My Dad and Uncle were twins and maintained P51's in Europe. I have the daily squadron logs and its amazing how many were lost to accidents and maintenance issues. They had 3 primary pilots during the war. They never had a single mechanical abort the entire war. Their last pilot put My Uncle as crew chief in for a commendation. He was awarded the Medal of Honor. It boggles my mind how many mechanics were required for all the aircraft during the war. My Dad could fix just about anything.
What a good story! Thanks
One thing to consider about that narrow stall speed window was that it would only take a sudden 8-knot gust of tailwind or slack in the existing wind to knock it out of the sky. Those mild gusts are VERY much within typical carrier operating conditions. There was just no way without modifying the flaps to improve stall speed. Could I have seen them load up a ton of escort carriers with these things if they fixed the stall speed issue? Sure, as they're small enough and in large enough quantity to be tasked for specialized service. But it just wasn't needed.
Interesting video thanks!
Some valid reasons for not continuing with carrier trials and development of the Mustang into a ship-borne escort fighter. Still, it would have been very cool to have such a thing as a USN F51F Seahorse, for real...
Photo at 03:05 is not Navy test pilot Bob Elder. That photograph shows a U.S. Air Force Colonel and Command Pilot.
A P51 in Navy colors would have been mighty pretty though!
Mustang has a "laminar flow wing" type design which doesn't give lift unless it's going fast, so it requires higher speed to avoid a stall. This is another reason why it isn't suitable for carrier landings, as compared with planes with conventional high lift wing designs. But in the right role and conditions (e.g. high altitude fuel savings and speed based dog fighting), the Mustang was a superior aircraft in many respects.
Every wing design that works is a laminar flow design .please look for technical details BEFORE writing.
@@michaelpielorz9283 NO need to be rude. Not EVERY wing is actually capable of Laminar flow, Laminar is just ONE type of airfoil dynamic achieved with optimal characteristics for speed and smooth flow of air. "things like ripples, wrinkles, rivet heads, bugs, small imperfections in shape, waves in the wing - all prevent laminar flow. Worse, many of these imperfections can be invisible in casual inspection by observers, and prevent laminar flow." Only certain wings get to be called "Laminar". But hey, it's only RUclips, not a technical journal.
3:38 Liquid cooled Mustangs I understand, but since when is engine coolant flammable???
Although the Bearcat was a very high performance airplane, it was not a long range fighter.
edit: Bring on the Tigercat!
It checks both boxes. ✔✔
The Army Air Corps pilot complained that the test of the Mustang had it landing at a speed 8 knots above the stall speed. That comment explains the difference between (AAC/USAF) pilots and Navy Carrier pilots who would consider landing at 8 knots above the stall speed as easy peasy.
The S-2E I flew in the late '60s off the USS Randolph CVS-15 and USS Yorktown CVS-10, by design landed at the stall speed (95 Knots for both). One of the reasons you will not the nose high attitude of Naval Aircraft is they are landing at or slightly above the stall speed. That area on the flight characteristic curve at which the aircraft is flying below the stall speed and at high power is called the backside of the power curve. The USAF position is to ignore that area and stay out of it. The Naval Aviators that are carrier based are trained how to handle that situation and understand it.
The is a food video on YT about a C-2A Greyhound that got a cold cat shot and went off the flight deck at below stall speed. The flight crew saved the airplane and all the people aboard because they did not panic and raise the nose (wrong response) instead they cleaned up the aircraft (reducing drag) and lowered the nose to build up airspeed. All well within less than 100' of the ocean. The tactical height of an S-2 tracking and prosecuting a sub contact and at times be as low as 25' above the ocean. Flew that many times, even when heading toward a ship when we had to climb above 100' to clear the supperstructure and then drop back down to 25' on the other side. This is one of the reasons we had radar altimiters on the plane. You couldn't trust the analog altimitiers.
Had the navy accepted the mustang it would have been the FJ1 but the FJ1 was a navy version of the F 86 Saber.
Does anybody know what happened to this aircraft after it was tested?
Thanks for the research and also for editing together the two posts.
It's a good thing to test & determine whether an aircraft already in use in theater in great numbers, can be applied to other critical roles.
What jumps out at me here is that the Navy gathered a team thoroughly familiar with the aircraft' strengths and weaknesses for carrier deployment, and were able to frame the issues within the wider context of the war effort, along with a pilot who could fly the airframe and evaluate performance objectively, seemingly without a pile of politics distorting the entire process.
Maybe some of that is only seen in the rearview mirror.
But even considering the inevitable politics and waste of waging war, it seems like the US in that period was far more able to focus on essentials than any moment since.
The Navy must not have been fully sold on the P-51 if they weren't concerned about not having folding wings.
I think the decision to take the island Iwo Jima a few months later solved the issue. Mustangs based there could do the escort mission. And the Bearcat was already available as a shipboard interceptor.
Comment conversations and exchanges here are mighty interesting. Makes me want to do some research. Thanks to ALL.
Please please have an episode where you deal with the B-25J Navy version landing on the Shangri-La I find that to be most interesting to me and a bunch of other people in the firebombers Wildfire bombers category enthusiasts
Well it could have worked in ferrying P-51s to Iwo Jima and Okinawa. But landing on a carrier deck i’m not very certain of that being sound.
I think the key here is The Taking of Iwo Jima. They took the island in order to have a base for escorts.
Most Air Force fighters were ferried overseas on carriers and taken off no problem !!
I question that the glycol coolant was flammable - can anyone clarify this ?
My Dad served on the USS SHANGRI-LA
Hmmm, F-8f vs f-51...do a video about that!
Bearcat vs the Mustang? That might be a good idea.
I don't see why they bothered with the Mustang, other than just to check it out. The Corsair had as much, if not more range than the Mustang, and they already had them in the Pacific. They could have easily done that job.
The F4U-4 had a range of 1850 miles with max drop tanks, the P51-D 2055 miles with drop tanks.
@@luvr381 I see 2140 for the F4U-1 on the official paperwork, with one external tank.
I see 2190 for a P51D with external tanks. That's virtually identical.
Of course this is just cruising, it doesn't account for loiter time over the target and how much fuel might be used in combat, so neither plane could really fly anywhere close to these ranges in a real life combat mission.
But there's simply not much difference in the two, and the Corsair is the better dogfighter and much more durable plane, so other than just checking the Mustang out, I suspect these reasons are why the Navy didn't pursue this any further.
Well, that other Merlin powered WW2 champion, the Spitfire (sorry, Seafire) did do sterling service on board British carriers. But those Brits were already accustomed to liquid cooled engines in their operations
The Seafire was a pretty lousy handling carrier fighter. Mustang would have had the same issues of poor visibility for deck landing. The stall speed would be an issue as well.
@@WALTERBROADDUS Yep, correct. However, it was the best, for a time, they had
Yes, you are correct, the Spitfire/Seafire was a " best of the worst" for carrier operations, as far as the inline liquid cooled engines, the Fleet Air Arm had already been using the Fairy Fulmar and later on the Sea Hurricane, Barracuda and Fairy Firefly. All of those aircraft had wide track undercarriage except the Barracuda. The Seafire was pretty dire for carrier operations, but it filled a gap until the arrival of the Grumman F4F's and F6F's.
@@neilfoster814 However, as I understand it, becáuse of the Seafire, they were able to tame the Beast: F4U Corsair for the Americans, which later went on to be a stallward for the marines(?) on the decks.
@@keesvandenbroek331 Corsair with both Navy and Marines together, in eventual carrier deck use. (As is seen still today in US carrier airwings, which all include one USMC squadron flying the same fighter/attack model as their USN shipmates). The reason the F4U got famously associated with the Marines first, was because they were able to immediately use it in its original early configuration from island land bases, to devastatingly good effect, well before the carrier-suitability fixes/upgrades had been done to the later-war models.
Cool idea to try out but with the advent of the F8F Bearcat, mustangs weren’t needed at all
Never heard of 'flammable' coolant.
I would say it's water, with some addition maybe.
Alcohol
It was Ethylene Glycol, which is flammable. Later models of the Merlin used a water/glycol mix, but you’re still storing pure Glycol on the ship - it’s a fire hazard.
@@jacksons1010so is gasoline smh 🙄🙄🙄
@@hotrodray6802 Really dude? The carrier had secure storage for AvGas with inert gas purging systems etc. They did not have storage tanks for glycol, which made it a problem…like the man said in the video. SMDH at people who lack fundamental knowledge yet think everybody else is being dumb! 🙄
@@jacksons1010 Can you provide some documentation of that ? I have never heard of glycol being flammable. Also, I'm fairly certain that all wartime Merlin engines used water/glycol mix.
I have no audio. I checked my device; the error is not mine.
From your transcript, at 1:03, the presentation mentions a "catapult hook". I understand that US Navy WW2 aircraft carriers had no catapult to launch aircraft. Please clarify.
Later, the narrative makes comparisons between a navalised North American Aviation P-51 Mustang Long-Range Fighter and the Grumman F-8F Bearcat USN Carrier-Based Interceptor. My thinking would be the Chance Vought F4U-4 Corsair USN Carrier-Based Fighter for its greater all round flexibility would have been a far better choice than either. Could one knowledgeable of the topic I raise provide substantive constructive feedback, please?
It's definitely not a carrier aircraft. I also believe the engine maintenance would have been more difficult. Radial engines were much simpler to maintain.
Actually named Sea Stallion
Shangri-La was at PNSY when I was stationed there for USS Independence SLEP.
The water cooled engine would likely never been approved, just my guess.
Sea Stallion would have been a name the pilots who flew it would have preferred over Sea Horse…I would think.
That would have been a huge changed for the navy in supply and logistics for a foreseeable minimum return for the effort.
I was hoping to see video of a p-51 landing on a carrier
cool, i did not know that!
Say what? What was the flammable coolant used in the P-51 Mustang?
Why didn’t they use corsairs for escort?
😆😆😆Outstanding Video. If it can be believed Eric "Winkle" Brown cut his stall margins even closer when landing his Mossie on a carrier deck. And the Herc pilot that landed and rotated his C-130 from a flat-top was no slouch either..."LOOK MOM NO HOOK"
He had help of a co pilot and the success was the reversible props on the C130 as they came over the stern of the ship and full throttle and they stopped !! !
@@wilburfinnigan2142 Agreed...Thats how they did it. I think he started reversing his props 100 yards out, before they touched down. Still off da hook tho. No pun intended. Most people lose it when thety find out they didnt use RATO or JATO for takeoff either.
Wings don't fold.
And the wings don’t fold!
the british had seafires on their carriers same engine
The coolant was ethylene glycol. It is not even a little flammable.
So, was the Bearcat used to escort the B-29's?
A C-130 has landed and taken off from an aircraft carrier, too. There is a video on youtube about it.
Since when is engine coolant flamable??
Not a crazy story at all. But you showed Elder as a navy pilot but yet the photo showed him in a army uniform and the coolant was not flammable either. The F-8F Bearcat didn’t enter service with VF-19 until after the war
If this has received a Navy designation, it would've been FJ-1. That would go to the Navy F-86 version.
No way…the margin for error is too slim. Grumman had a lock on the Navy for good reason.
Wow, I thought i knew it all. Good job.
Never heard of this. Did Navy fighters ever take on the B-29 escort role?
Actually that's part of the reason for the invasion Iwo Jima. The Airfield was used as an emergency B-29 base. And had an entire Fighter Group of long-range P-51 doing the escort mission.
Corky Meyers a Grumman test pilot stated that the Mustang had miserable stall characteristics.
The mustangs wing was laminar flow designed for speed and efficience, not slow speed flight !!!
Well, at least the Seafire was able to become a navy plane
Unfortunately, a rather poor one.
Overall, nicely done.
But
2:15 THOSE ARE NOT B-29s!
3:05 I don't know who that is in a USAF uniform BUT IT'S NOT BOB ELDER!
I was fortunate to know Bob well. Widely acknowledged as one of the finest aviators of his era. Often overlooked: his former Bombing Squadron 3 squadronmate, Sid Bottomley, flew the PBJ (navy B-25) carrier tests at the same time.
I guess the Mustang P-51 was not designed for the carrier. I am having trouble understanding the stall issue with the P-51. I remember hearing Navy Wildcat & Hellcat pilots say that carrier landing is a controlled crash. The engine speed is lowered to the point where the aircraft just fall onto the deck of the ship. Isn't that equivalent to stalling the engine to the point where there is no lift and the aircraft just drop onto the carrier deck? Maybe not. British pilots who flew the carrier version of the Spitfire say that the carrier Spitfire was not made for carrier landing. Many carrier version of the Spitfire were damaged while landing onto the carrier deck. They felt that the Grunman Wildcat & Hellcat were better at carrier landing. Could it be for the same reason?
One of the narrator highlighted the coolant of the P-51 was flammable. And flammable coolant is not compatible with ships. Yes, but isn't aviation fuel flammable. Do aircraft carriers have aviation fuel on board? I think carriers do have aviation fuel stored for their warplanes, so there is flammable liquids on carriers. Though a damaged air-cooled radial engine can continue to function and make it back to their home carriers. Whereas a liquid-cooled inline engine is more likely to overheat and not make it back to their home carrier. With that said I thought P-51 fighters did escort and protect B-29 bombers over Japan in the Pacific theatre. I am not sure if that really happened since P-51 fighters could not be used on carriers.
With all the fires on Carriers being so devastating, adding antifreeze that has a flashpoint so low that a hot day in the Pacific might mean fires on deck from puddles of antifreeze cooking off was the big issue. Another is, Naval aircraft are built tougher because the deck landing is totally unforgiving. Mustangs were designed to land on concrete, turf, or dirt runways. Trust me on this, 20 years in the Air Navy and standing on concrete is easier on your feet than standing on a flight deck made with up to 30 inches of armor plate. Hell, my first workup working flight deck was when I found out government issue flight deck boots NEEDED sneaker insoles.... my feet were so bruised, looked like a damn x-ray of my feet.
I would expect concrete to be at least as hard as steel .
We 2 Carrier flight decks were timber
@@geofffox8390correct
Is that an 'internet video game navy aircraft carrier deck' with 30" of armor under your 'internet video game feet'? Because no ship of any navy anywhere in the world had or has 30" of armor, ever.
Has a P-38 Lightning ever landed on a carrier?
I do not think so? Grumman was already working on a twin engine carrier fighter. The f7f tigercat.
To begin with, there's physically no realistic way to mount a tailhook at all on a P-38, just due to the twin-boom configuration. So pretty much ruled out right from the start.
...
[[ *Edit* ~~ Well, before posting, I reconsidered my assertion about tailhook incompatibility on a fork-tail for a minute, upon sudden recollection of De Havilland's Sea Venom and Sea Vixen designs. These both were of "twin-boom" configuration, vaguely (but I do mean, only "vaguely") similar to the P-38. But the P-38's center/cockpit pod/fuselage, basically goes no further aft than the trailing edge of the wing, whereas the Venom and Vixen both have enough fuselage length+mass much farther behind the main landing gear, to allow the tailhook to trail well behind the wheelbase.
For a tailhook to really work well, the "hook" part really can't be in the same fore-and-aft vicinity as the main wheels. I won't go into a tedious attempt at explaining the geometrical/functional issues at stake. But long story short... Despite these other viable examples of Twin-boom+Tailhook carrier aircraft, I'll still stand pretty confidently with my initial reaction: that a P-38 tailhook would be unworkable without some sort of major mods to the length/shape/size of the center fuselage pod, which would be substantial enough to cause significant aerodynamic headaches (even above and beyond the notorious existing compressibility/"flutter" issue that haunted the Lightning, which was never really solved), necessitating what would have amounted to a prohibitively major redesign. ~~ ]]
...
Even aside from that, having heard of occasional instances where the whole airframe of a P-38 got warped out of shape just from some violent level of dogfight maneuvering from a particularly aggressive pilot... makes me pretty sure that airframe was inherently "fragile" enough that it would not have endured carrier landings without damage. (And I mean the P-38's whole structure overall, let alone the landing gear specifically being inevitably too weak on basically ALL aircraft that have ever been "converted" to carrier use.)
Incidentally, airframe stress/damage was exactly the issue with early models of the F7F Tigercat on carrier trials, which delayed its introduction until various structure had been beefed up on the later versions. (This delay rendered the F7F effectively obsolescent at least for carrier use, upon the contemporaneous introduction of the more quickly-developed F8F Bearcat, which was itself also too late for the war, as well as eclipsed by the dawning Jet Age.) And all this was from the one company that were already known as THE long-standing experts on notoriously strong carrier airframes: the "Grumman Iron Works".
Mark Felton production team Must see this WW2 Documentary
So the F8F Bearcat could outfly the Mustang? I always thought the Mustang was the pinnacle of ally fighter planes in WWII. The FW-109 in certain variations and good fuel is the only non-jet that could give the Mustang real problems. The Spitfire of course was great, but that’s where the Mustang sourced it’s power so it ain’t too fair to compare the two since the Spitfire in many ways was the testbed for allied alpha fighter technologies.
Did the pilot receive a DFC?
The action deserved it: a la landing a C130 on deck and IIRC a U2.
Don't think the bear cat would out fly the P51
Surely they would have had to call it Sea Stang?
I agree with the Navy pilots. The Mustang was not the correct solution.
After reading and watching documentation on the Mustang… it had a pretty dismal time surviving ground fire. Truth is, other than fleet defense interceptors.. all fighters need to carry bombs and deliver them ..with a risk of bullets and flak hitting at least a few aircraft every mission.
At that time…. I would have chosen the Corsair over any other Naval aircraft and would have chosen the P-47D over any land based aircraft because they spent a large percentage of their missions shooting anything they could find on the ground.
In Korea the P-51’s loss rate was so high that the Army’s leaders in theater begged the military leaders in Washington to send P-47’s from Europe, the P-51 was quickly retired in Europe while the P-47’s were kept due to their phenomenal record at the end of the war both dogfighting but more importantly as a ground attack.
As for the Navy… the new Corsairs had the same range as the Mustang, just a little under 1100 miles (depending on who you read or ask)
Thanks for the great comment, Bret!
Why not show the U-2 takeoff and landing?
hawk tuah and don‘t stall that thang!
"You can't land a P-51 on a carrier!"
"Hold my beer....."
🥱
Too funny!
never heard of coolant being flamable,,,,i thought it was glycol and water,,,,,what do i know??
The Grumman Bear cat Fighter and Gull Wing Northop Corsair Naval Fighters lack of Range too was also a problem.
Chance-Vought, not Northrop
@@519CZRacer
Thanks for your reply clarification .
coolant is flammable????
Got to land somewhere.
Anytime you get a high performance aircraft with a higher top speed the stall speed goes up also. general facts of physics, and the P51 Mustangs had a higher stall speed than the slower navy fighters, even the F4U Corsair had problems with higher stall speed and the left wing stalled before the right, causing many crashes untill they added a stall device to the right wing, and they had to land them at a higher speed !!! not all was rosy !! !
Now hear me out, I would want to try this in warthunder as an event plane or premium or something like that
War thunder should add this mustang
Why did the P-51 land on the carrier? Because it can.
The coolant is not flammable .
P40 were liquid cooled and saw carrier duty
So the Bearcat could out perform the Mustang?!?! 🤔🤨🙄
NO !!!! was not faster and did not have the range !!
@@wilburfinnigan2142 as you could see I was not believing that by the, ?!?!. Ok.