more compact but still huge ....

@@Itsjustme-Justme - Avenger was a much better aircraft in comparison to it's huge ugly overweight brother.

And the Avenger itself isn't exactly a small aircraft.

The avenger was actually longer the wingspan was a a few feet shorter the max speed for the avenger was 275 mph while the seawolf was 312 mph

@@rogertycholiz2218they weighed about the same and the Avenger was longer

awkward yes but vulnerable definitely

in combat spotter/radio operator will crawl to belly tail gun, and pilot still have armored seat, only radio stay in that "greenhouse" canopy

and if plane land on sea, that canopy is the only way radio operator can get out, other door is under waterline

@@duytranuc4025 right, and it's not like the fuselage is that much better than glass at stopping bullets.

Why vulnerable? The fuselage structure wouldn't stop a bullet either! LOL

Grumman Iron Works

My dad has 18 years flying stoofs, and C-1's like I said if you can break one that is and achievement (without killing yourself doing it). As a kid I can recall watching them shooting landings at NAS North Island in the ICE PLANT to simulate slippery conditions

Has the advantage of similar Grumman parts for the logistics pipeline, I imagine. Plus if a mechanic is trained to work on one Grumman he can probably be easily trained to work on the next.

@@donjones4719 There has been no information that any more than a few parts were interchangeable between the TBF/M and F4F or F6F. The main common parts were probably part of the wing folding mechanism that were on all three aircraft.

Grumman Ironworks, not boilerworks, and it was because of Grumman's reputation for building landing gear strong enough to withstand carrier service that they were selected to build the LEM for the Apollo program.

A bit like the albacore over the swordfish.. but they had issues with refraction on all that glass. ..

There are a way too many reinforcing bars. Sounds great on paper, but awful in practice.

As a WWII aviation geek, he keeps blinkin' doing it! The man clearly has sources!

I love the Avenger, I'll admit.

Nothing would have changed, the Mk 13 torpedo did not work, over a 90% failure rate.They didn't get the bugs out until 1944 The Japanese should have given a medal to the people who recommended its adoption

My father was radio/gunner in USN TBM Avenger

@@jamesricker3997 That, and the horrible attrition rate during an attempted attack was one of the reasons they largely abandoned torpedo runs. My father's logbook indicates 100% 'glidebomb'( interesting phrase) attacks in '43 and '44. Cowpens CVL 25, VT25

@@johnwriter8234 What ship/squadron?

As a pure strike aircraft, obviously the Skyraider is a superior aircraft in all regards. The only role left for traditional torpedo attack aircraft at that point was ASuW stuff.

Yup the skyraider was going to eclipse them all

Indeed it looks the offspring of a Barracuda and a Skua

Say goodbye to the misery of scurvy.

The general aviation airfield is named Queen City Airport, and is not far from the Mack Trucks Testing Facility.

A pity the Beatles were not yet available.

@@scootergeorge9576 beatle actually existed already , base for VW "kuebelwagen" . Means bucketcar.

@@alexzenz760 - The Kubelwagon was an adaptation of the KDF, "Strength Through Joy" Beetle, later renamed "people's car." There was also an amphibious "Swimming wagon." And my favorite Hitler photo is him seated in a prototype Beetle convertible, circa 1939.

@@scootergeorge9576 engineering by ferdinand porsche.

@@alexzenz760 - Yes. The man was also involved in tank and armored vehicle design.

All on the list :)

Would indeed! :-D

I knew someone would bring up the stringbag. If all the USN did was sneak attacks (Mers-el-Kebir and Taranto) or attacks on un-escorted capital ships with crap anti-aircraft capabilities (Bismark and Prinz Eugen) which were the swordfish's big win, they still would have been better off without the swordfish. Yes, it could fly, carry, and drop a torpedo but the IJN would have made mincemeat out of them the same way Jerry did during the channel dash.

Look up Black Cat PBY Catalinas.

@@scottclaymore8097 the Germans had fairly decent for the time anti air systems but they were calibrated For far faster aircraft than the swordfish which really should have been looked on as a sort of helicopter substitute .

Without the better British air launched torpedo, no British aircraft would have done better than an American made plane.

I was thinking to myself that this looked like the ugly USN cousin to the FAA Fairey Barracuda!

The fact it had decent performance automatically ruled it out for FAA service.

@@duncanhamilton5841 The "good" performance was actually often counterproductive and is a large reason why torpedo bombers no longer exist and the aircraft that do launch a torpedo nowadays are helicopters. As there is a maximum limit to the speed at which you can jettison a torpedo and have it go through water accurately or even survive the transition from air to water thus extreme low speed and good low-speed maneuverability are essential for accurate drops, unfortunately, this requirement means you are a sitting duck to any fighter cover so you create a trade-off between accurate drops and the ability to evade fighters while going to the target the American torpedo bombers had to slow down when conducting an attack run and during the drop itself would be flying at almost identical speeds as the UK torpedo bombers and were more at risk from AA etc during the run itself as they lacked the slow speed maneuverability, while the UK focused more on the accuracy of drop and maneuverability during the attack run itself relying on fighters and their significantly better fighter director control at the time to provide cover for the torpedo bombers, which is a major part of why the Fairey Swordfish sank significantly more shipping than any other torpedo bomber of any combatant in the war. a good but often overlooked example of the effectiveness is in the Mediterranean a single squadron of 27 Swordfish aircraft from Malta sank an average of 50,000 tons of shipping a month for 9 consecutive months in late 1941-42 with a record of 98,000 tons in one month (numbers comparable to the entire U-boat arm in the Atlantic during the same period) people often have a top trumpsesq reaction to aircraft where they look at stats like speed and automatically think that a bigger number is better, while ignoring other factors like the mission requirement doctrinal differences and other intangibles.

I wonder what would happen if the auto land was engaged and the pilot had to bolter, what kind of delay would there be after disengaging auto land and slamming the throttle to the stop?

@@NH2112 I don't think it ever happened to give it a try. I have a book on the XTBU/TBY and it claimed that the "auto land" system was very tricky to set properly and it had to be rigorously tested on each plane before it could be OK'd to use. The plane was not made in the quantity or used enough that more than a few people probably were ever trained to set it properly.

@@robertdendooven7258 I’m just trying to imagine what kind of engineering nightmare it must have been, probably getting electrical, pressure, and vacuum signals. I can’t even imagine the lag the system must have had.

Knowledge is built on experience

Indeed. Hence the Mauler, skyraider and the Kaiser-fleetwing!

"Unconstrained budgets" John Shepherd you got that exactly correct. Plus they were minful, right up until the surrender of the Empire of Japan, how bloody the conquest of the home islands wwould be. The big budget purse continued to be displayed in the construction of startegic bombers and high speed interceptors for the new USAF.

@@EdNashsMilitaryMatters the Fleetwing and the Maluer had handling issues, bad thing when landing on a carrier The Skyraider was smaller than the Maluer, a carrier could hold 3 skydivers for every 2 maulers

While the Corsairs could in theory be equipped with 2000 to 4000 lbs in theory thanks to pylons, in practics the late model corsairs could not carry a bigger a load than TBF/M or the SB2C. You are trying to quote theoretical paper values. In actual practice the corsair usually carried either one 1,000lb bomb or eight rockets so it could still have range. The biggest practical load a corsair could carry was 1000lb bomb with eight rockets. This is because the range went way down the further you increased the load. The bombers could actually carry the same 1000lb load even further and could carry a 1600 to 2000 lbs while still having a 100+ mile combat radius. Corsairs if they carried a 2000lb load meanwhile could not carry the same load as far which means the carriers would have to get closer. And the main advantage the carrier has over the battleship is striking distance.

@@EdNashsMilitaryMatters He's actually wrong. Corsairs in practice only did 1000lb bomb loads and needed a drop tank to go about the same distance as the more dedicated bombers. That's why a Corsair with a 2000lb bomb load was rarely used.

.250 plex? You realize the 7.7mm could get through almost 3/8" of mild steel. Although you have a point, .020 aluminum would be easier to maintain.

The bombs on the bus go boom boom boom, boom boom boom, boom boom boom.

Congress would approve that funding. "Think about the CHILDREN!!"

All in good time... 😉

Curtiss SB2C Helldiver,Douglass SBD Dauntless

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

You are right about the Hellcat. The F6F-1 had the R-2600, but the Navy came to Grumman and told them to use the more powerful R-2800 which resulted in the F6F-3. Maybe Vought thought that the R-2800 would be better since they also designed the XF4U with it. It also had something to do with Vought was part of a company that also owned Pratt & Whitney. 😉

Goddamn. Lmao.

"Avenger finished the war as the largest and heaviest single-engined carrier aircraft ever built." Let me correct your statement for you, Avenger finished the war as the largest and heaviest single-engine carrier DEPLOYED aircraft ever built. The TBY was a heavier aircraft even without any weapons and 180 (some sources say 189) production aircraft were built.

The Swordfish never experienced the Pacific.

@@kurttate9446 True, however; it was in use throughout the war. I did check yesterday. According to Wikipedia; it was responsible for the destruction of more axis shipping than any other single type.

SM79 was perhaps the most successful ITALIAN torpedo bomber of the war.

that was came into my mind....Grumman didn't want to lose their slush money?

Maybe the guy's father worked for Grumman...? LOL

Was the Cadets name Ensign John McCain?

Feel free to keep the drivel in your head

@@rileycpo if he was a cadet, then he was not an Ensign...genius

Have to agree. The design looks like the airplanes I drew in grade school when I wasn't listening to the teacher- which was frequently.

And yet it outperformed the Avenger in just about every category except for time to develop a production aircraft. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I bet the pilots of the torpedo planes at Midway would have loved to have been flying this "ugly" aircraft.

@@robertdendooven7258 it did not however outperform the avenger in actual combat so there's that

@@shawnbeckmann1847 That is something we will never know because it was never in combat. You do not know one way or the other if it would have been better.

@@robertdendooven7258 I do know....

I must admit no to both.