Posted on 03/10/2006 11:54:30 AM PST by A.A. Cunningham
Ah...yes...the Bearcat! A beautiful plane, but seemed somewhat...how do I say...high strung?
I always wondered how it would have done in real combat. I saw the accident in Oshkosh a few years back, when the Bearcat collided with the Corsair...made me sick to see that.
First they replaced my big iron computers with IBM PCs that ran the same programs in minutes instead of hours. Then they sank my ship, the USS America. Now this. I'm officially old. That, and I got bifocals a few months ago.
All the time at Top Gun and it depends on who was flying. I'm sure it happened in the fleet as well. In the hands of good pilots A-4s, F-5s, F-16Ns, F/A-18s could defeat the Tomcat.
That and the 18E/F is a major upgrade. A lot of airframe changes. The 14 never got an update as big as that.
It is kinda too bad really. Even with a big update though I doubt it could match the maintainability times of the 18. Some things just have to be designed in from the ground up.
The Grumman F8F Bearcat (affectionately called "Bear") was the company's final piston engined fighter aircraft. Designed for the interceptor fighter role, the design team's aim was to create the smallest, lightest fighter that could fit around the Pratt & Whitney R2800 engine (carried over from the F6F Hellcat) and the armament of four 20mm cannon. Compared to its predecessor, the Bearcat was 20% lighter, had a 30% better rate of climb, and was 50 mph (80 km/h) faster. In comparison with the Vought F4U Corsair, the Bearcat was marginally slower but was more manuverable and climbed faster. Many features of its design were inspired by a captured Focke-Wulf Fw 190 fighter that had been handed over to the Grumman facilities.
The F8F prototypes were ordered in November 1943 and first flew on 21 August 1944, a mere nine months later. The first production aircraft was delivered in February 1945 and the first squadron was operational by 21 May, but World War II was over before the aircraft saw combat service.
Postwar, the F8F became a major Navy fighter, equipping 24 fighter squadrons. Often mentioned as one of best (if not the best) handling piston-engine fighters ever built, their performance was such that they outmatched even many early jets, but that advantage was eventually eclipsed; the Grumman F9F Panther and McDonnell F2H Banshee largely replaced it in USN service.
Other nations that flew the Bearcat included the French and Thai air forces. French aircraft saw combat service in French Indochina as fighter-bombers in the early 1950s.
A small number of Bearcats survive; approximately eleven are airworthy, eight are restored for static display and approximately a dozen are wrecks or restoration projects. Bearcats have been fairly popular in air racing, and one, Rare Bear owned by Lyle Shelton is the holder of the record as the "fastest propeller-driven aircraft in the world" (averaged over a 3km course) at 528.33 mph (850.26 km/h), set in 1989.
In order to take down an aircraft from 100 miles off, you have to know where he is from 100 miles off. This means you have to have your radar putting out a lot of power (which has YOU being visible from a long distance). Also, with the trend towards more stealthy aircraft, you might not even be able to pick him up from a hundred miles away
The Joint Strike FIghter is supposed to fill that role
Should be on carrier decks no sooner than 2020 if the pace of development of the F22 is any example of the furious pace of fighter development these days.
Using no computer aided design, we could put a plane from concept to combat in less than a year during WWI...
Correct, don't they use a naval version of AWACS for that? I don't remember the designation.
Is there any reason (other than excessive cost) that they can't make the missiles stealthy? Not knowing it is on the way until seconds before impact could ruin a bad guy's whole day!
You don't need to paint a target very long with a missile that travels at Mach 4+ and once the missile was launched the AWG-9 didn't transmit CW. When the missile reached a certain distance from the target it switched to active homing. 100 miles is a distance covered quicklyat those speeds and Soviet bombers weren't known for their exemplary jinking abilities.
You know I couldn't let that go, right?
Here is the deal. The kids would show up for TopGun with their shiny new Hornets or older Tomcats, loaded for bear. We would take them out to the Mojave range and beat them up until they understood that the airplane was not going to be the difference maker. The Fleet taught everyone about the 1-2 circle crap, reversals, vertical stuff, but very rarely was there much discussion about energy maneuvering and reading energy state in your adversary.
Even a Hornet can get bogged down after holding G too long, because its engines are not that powerful. So we would beat up everybody until they got a clue. By the time Hornet kids graduated TopGun, they should win best 1-2 of 5 every time against an F-5 or 3 of 5 with an A-4. But if we were in the F-16N, they really didn't have a chance if we stopped teaching and just killed them. We were light and had too much engine for them.
Hornet vs. Tomcat?
With equal pilots, it depends on the environment. Up high, the Hornet should win if the Tomcat doesn't run. Down low, the Tomcat should smoke the Hornet every time or just run away from it if it loses the advantage. The Tomcat has beautiful low speed handling with the wing. Now, everything I said, assumes a B or D Tomcat. The A is another story.
The shades of many Naval Aviators, like Butch O'Hare, et al, are looking down and wondering. Those of us who read about these "Cats" and the heroes who flew them are also wondering.
http://www.feebleminds-gifs.com/ufo_1.gif
The Tigercat was quite a plane too.
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