best WW II fighter, The

Flight Journal, Aug 2003 by Meyer, Corky

Had the War ended at the end of 1942, the Zero would have been considered one of the very best fighters ever designed. However, as the War progressed, this 1936 design did not age well compared with its rapidly progressing enemies. While it was superb in the role for which it was designed, the role of the fighter changed rapidly, leaving the Zero in its wake.

2 Vought F4U-I Corsair

The beautiful, gull-wing Chance Vought F4U series was designed specifically for carrier operations but had such an abysmal accident rate that it was removed from carrier service after its first suitability tests in September 1942. Not until December 1944 was it restored to carrier operations-two years later than promised.

Another major disadvantage of the Corsair was that it was the first, state-of-the-art, carrier-based fighter Chance Vought designed for wartime mass production, so the aircraft suffered from that company's lack of knowledge and experience of fighters. This, combined with the aircraft's experimental Pratt & Whitney R-2800 engine failure (which caused the crash of its only prototype), its more difficult, flush-riveted, double-curvature fuselage skins and its complicated gull-wing structure (which required that all the fuel-tank capacity be moved into the fuselage), greatly delayed the Corsair's planned deployment to the Pacific.

Its flight characteristics, however, made it a fighter pilot's dream. All the pilots who flew it lauded its low stabilities and light control forces. Its powerful aileron control gave it a very fast rolling rate for combat maneuvers-one that was exceeded by only a few other fighters. Capt. Marion Carl, a highly decorated U.S. Marine Corps ace flying the Corsair at Guadalcanal, stated that it was "the greatest fighter" he ever flew.

For the land-based requirement, the F4U-1 was deployed to Guadalcanal on February 12, 1943. It replaced the Grumman Wildcat in larger numbers and had a much greater combat capability. During the next two years, it was used for the much-needed land-based Navy and Marine fighter and fighter-bomber island-hopping operations that led up to the invasion of Japan, which never occurred. It performed splendidly, shooting down 2,140 enemy aircraft and making 93 U.S. aces with an 11-to-1 kill-to-loss ratio. At the same time, it dropped thousands of tons of bombs and rockets in its ground-support role. But that wasn't the role the U.S. Navy had wanted it to play.

1 Grumman Hellcat

From December 7, 1941, to August 1943, the Grumman Wildcat provided the U.S. Navy with the numbers of aircraft it required for the land and carrier-based fighters needed for the first 18 months of the hostilities. The F6F-3 Hellcat then took over and satisfied the fast-carrier-deployment-schedule requirement until December 1944 when the Corsair at last became carrier qualified. The F6F-3 Hellcat's design, tooling, manufacturing and flight-delivery personnel were also the ones who had continuously delivered Wildcats and four other earlier Grumman fighter models to the U.S. Navy; successful carrier operations had been the norm since 1930. Grumman had well-founded carrier-fighter experience on which to base the design of the Hellcat.