(Stephen "FPilot" Bierce) wrote:
"David E. Powell"
wrote:

Did western antitank planes rely
more on bombs and rockets? (Outside the P-39
of course?)

DEP

Of course not. There were upgunned Hurricanes,
and numerous fighters and light
and medium bombers outfitted as strafers/gunships.
The 37mm gun on the
Airacobra/Kingcobra was a contraversial weapon
to the Americans (some pilots
liked it and many didn't), and it was generally
thought that anything bigger
than 20mm on a combat airplane was effete.
Perhaps it was more of a logistics
issue than anything else...since the .50 caliber
machine gun seemed to be
adequate in a general-purpose sense, why upgrade?

The Allies (in particular the Americans) never
fielded a specifically anti-armor
airplane in spite of going through dozens of
designs. Simply fitting bomb racks
and rocket rails on a day fighter--or packing
extra machine guns on a medium
bomber--made more sense from a production standpoint
than having a specialized
type created and put into action.

Allied wartime CAS thinking ultimately resulted
in the Douglas Skyraider. We'll
never know what a plane like that would have
done on the Western Front, but to
me it would have done what the Thunderbolt,
Typhoon, Tempest, Beaufighter,
Mosquito and Mustang did...and more of it.

Stephen "FPilot" Bierce/IPMS #35922
{Sig Quotes Removed on Request}
First appearance of the Skyraider would have been early '46, just in time
for CORONET; the invasion of the Kanto Plain after OLYMPIC (the invasion
of Southern Kyushu).

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