"Steven P. McNicoll" wrote:

"John Keeney" wrote in message
...

Way back when Wings was on the Discovery channel instead of
being a channel (that I don't get) they had one episode that was
basicly the P-47 in the PTO. That episode had a fair amount of
footage showing Jugs being catapulted off a carrier.


Are you sure they were catapulted and not simply flown off?

From at least 1944 on, all American fighters were equipped for or with
catapult hooks, so they could be air-delivered to forward airfields by
CVEs. In the specific case of the P-47, I'm guessing you'd need about
a 50-60 knot WoD to make a successful free take-off from a CVE.
Checking "America's Hundred Thousand," it lists the P-47C takeoff run
with full internal fuel and ammo (13,582 lb.) @ SL, zero wind, hard
surface runway, and t/o power, as 2,220 ft. Here they are, in order
of shortest to longest takeoff run in the above conditions, in feet:

P-40E, 1,070.

P-38J, 1,080.

P-51D, 1,185*

P-51A, 1,415.

P-39Q-1, 1,650.

P-63A, 1,700.

P-39D-2, 1,750.

P-40N-1, 1,760.

P-47C, 2,220.

P-61B, 2,420.

P-47D-25, 2,540.

*I have serious doubts about this being correct, and suspect it's a
typo. The P-51D weighs over 1,500 lb. more than the P-51A (albeit
with considerably more power and a four-bladed prop), and I just don't
believe that it's better than, e.g., the P-63A.

Now here's the navy fighters, same conditions:

F2A-3, 620.

F4U-4, 630.

F4F-3A, 650.

F4F-3, 690.

F4F-4, 710.

F4U-1 (early), 750.

F6F-5, 780.

F4U-1D, 840.

F6F-3, 950*

I suspect this is another typo. There's no obvious reason why the
slightly lighter F6F-3 should be so much worse than the F6F-5, even if
there was some increase in t/o power with the latter, and I don't
think there was. I'd also expect the F6F to have better t/o
performance than the F4U-1 and 1D.

As you'd expect, the Army fighters require considerably longer t/o
runs than the navy ones, with the P-47 bringing up the rear. checking
various navy S.A.C. charts, a WoD of 25 knots cuts the (deck) t/o run
to a bit less than half of the zero wind run, i.e. the F6F-5 drops
from 799 to 384 ft. and the F4U-4 from 790 to 377 ft. Assuming the
same % decrease for the P-47, it still would need a run of 1,000 ft.+
with 25 knots WoD. The a/c would normally be much lighter for a
delivery flight, but still, CVE flight decks allowed 450 ft. runs at
the outside. In other words, it's extremely unlikely that a P-47
could make a free run deck takeoff from a CVE.

Guy