Bertie the Bunyip wrote:
Dudley Henriques wrote in
:

Roger (K8RI) wrote:
On Mon, 17 Dec 2007 05:28:52 -0500, Dudley Henriques
wrote:

Matt W. Barrow wrote:
"Dudley Henriques" wrote in message
news Morgans wrote:
"Dudley Henriques" wrote

The 51 was a fine airplane, and it worked well at all altitudes
but it was nearing the end of its run at the end of the war.
I loved the airplane and flew it often but for me, flying the
F8F Bearcat one sunny afternoon in December, redefined the
meaning of the term "prop fighter performance".
In my opinion, if the war had lingered on and the Bear had been
mass produced for both theaters, the F8F would have not seen its
match anywhere.
Interesting. I had never heard that expressed, before.

Would the F8F had the legs to do the long range bomber escort
missions?

How about top speeds; was it as fast, or faster than the 51?
The Bear had VERY short legs and even with the drop tank would
never have made it as a long range fighter.
In close, intercept, and shoot it down fast was the Bear's prime
intended function.

Designed to defeat Kamikazes' at a distance, no?


Not all that far really. Total fuel was 185 gals without the drop
tank, so the range was severely limited. Figuring climb, cruise and
combat power settings, I'd say less than 90 minutes to bingo fuel.
I was talking with a P-40 pilot up at GDW a while back and he said
they typically fly at economy cruise to cut the fuel consumption "way
back" to only 80 gallons per hour (give or take a tad) :-))

Roger (K8RI)
That's about right for an Allison V1710. Makes me glad to be retired
:-))

Really? Even at cruise? Sounds high to me. I would have thought a bit
over half that anyway at say, 240 knots. We used to burn about 45 with
an 1830, for instance. I could see the allison easily burning 80 doing
aerobatics, though.


Bertie

A lot of the "savvy" guys had a tendency to run a bit on the high side
to keep the plugs cleaner. The Merlin would foul the plugs easily if you
favored low power settings and didn't blow it out every once in a while.
Not so sure about the Allison but most likely the same.

Talking min fuel only it's true you can get it down to way less with no
trouble.
The Merlin could be brought all the way back to 28.5" at 1600RPM down as
low as 5K feet and that brought the fuel burn down to around 42gph. Up
high, you could take the blower off the auto switch and into manual low
blower and get a better fuel burn up there as well.

--
Dudley Henriques