Warbird Information Exchange

I apologize if this may be on an earlier thread.

One of the things that has always intrigued me were the combat histories, accounts, and comparisons between the Wildcat (Martlet), Hellcat and Corsair in either US service (Torch) or RN service against their German contempories.

For example, how would a Corsair have stacked up against a ME-109 or FW-190?

Does anyone know of any resources that explore this?

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"So there I was, knee deep in a river I couldn't pronounce..."

Corsairs never fought Luftwaffe aircraft, tho theoretically they would've stacked up well except at very high altitude....Hellcats on the other hand DID meet up with some Nazi fighters and as I recall from some long ago posts came out pretty well also, shooting down some BF 109's (can anyone extrapolate on this?)...Wildcats fought the Germans and did ok, I was always fascinated with the French Hawk 75's of the Vichy French fighting American Wildcats over North Africa....

Mark

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Mark Morris

Yup, RN Hellcats from 800NAS flying fighter cover on the May 1944 attack on the Tirpitz, claimed 2 x 109's and a single Fw190 (German records subsequently showed only losses being 109 though) during a fight with a mix of 109's and 190's.
2 RN Hellcats were lost to enemy anti-aircraft fire.

The Hellcats and Widcats also straffed the Tirpitz as well during this operation.

Corsairs did fly on this operation, but didn't see any air to air combat.

RN Wildcats of 882NAS did engage Luftwaffe a/c in combat in March 1945, also off the Norweigan coast, and accounted for 3 x 109's for the loss of no Wildcats.

Heres a USN comparative report between the F4U-1D, F6F-3, and FW190-A5.

http://www.geocities.com/slakergmb/id88.htm

This is great stuff!

Thanks for the replies; this is something that has long fascinated me.

_________________
"So there I was, knee deep in a river I couldn't pronounce..."