Under construction. Stay tuned. Special request.

What if Admiral Moffett had become CNO in 1922?



You build two of these as proof of concept and TRAINING carriers. Two of them allows you to run fleet problems with actual carriers opposing each other in the marinekriegspiels.

In wartime, they become plane ferries or fighter carriers.



Okay we actually build Version IV [slow] of the Lexingtons as the two carriers allowed under the Washington Treaty and we drop the tonnage by 5000 tons each over the historical Lexingtons, so we can cheat on the follow on Constellations when we build our next two carriers under the Washington Treaty.



This is why we drop the tonnage. This gives us 155,000 tons with which to play instead of the 145,000 we actually had. We get two full sized bird farms instead of the historic Ranger and Wasp.



And then we get the Yorktowns, but these have hurricane bows and they have the amidships deck-edge load lift and elevator that would otherwise be pioneered on Wasp.

That gives us a better carrier force and better odds as we go up against the Kaigun Butai.

Reasons.

1. Right off the bat, the USN realized that the only hope for sinking ships with planes was massed air attack. It might only take two to four bomb hits to wreck a cruiser, or a carrier but you had a success fail ratio of 20% in Fleet Problems in anti-shipping bombing and 20% success fail for torpedo attacks. Do the math. You need to put at least 20 dive bombers over a carrier to ensure four bomb hits and you need at least 16 torpedo planes to score three hits. That is what the USN thought it took in combination to kill a Lexington-sized carrier as a result of their kriegspiels.

2. The more planes the better means that bigger carrier up to a point ios better. Right around 1927, the USN figured out that 100 planes was about all you can cram onto a ship and handle flight operations. Any larger and you ruin into flight deck parking and movement issues. This is not the days of the angled flight deck and the front to back strike below rearm lift and launch aircraft service cycle. (That cycle comes in 1943 when Mad Freddie Sherman invents it.)

3. So there are two more carriers, two years earlier, and they show up in fleet problems as blue and orange EARLY, from 1934 on.

4. 1+2+3=4. Trained air-wings and carrier admirals who won't be learning how to conduct war OJT DURING A WAR; as Halsey, Fletcher, and Fitch did, during January to April 1942, when they ran around bombing islands uselessly, just to learn how to operate their ships.^1

5. It also might give BuOrd a clue during fleet problems with live target sled practice that the Mark XIII, XIV, and XV don't work. Bring on the Mark XVI....... and the Mark XIII mod6.

Next posting would be the what if; for aircraft.

^1 The time wasted in learning how to fight would have been better spent fighting. The "poke them with a stick" raids were premature given how appallingly unready the USN was to actually fight.
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A little CHAOS is a GOOD thing.

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Traditional maligned Douglas aircraft; it is short-ranged and underpowered, armed with a horrible torpedo at the time. There is no US alternative to it available.



The Dauntless is the stuff of legend. This silly plane in the hands of a good pilot could stand off Zekes. It also did what a Stuka could not do ever; it won a war in five minutes.



This is the four machine gun version with the folding wings. The reason for this chosen version is that four machine guns means more bullets per gun in the stow pan so you have more seconds of machine gun fire. Its faster than the six gun version. It also means that you have more altitude to ceiling and a faster rate of climb because of less weight in guns and ammo to drag aloft. Trade-offs you chose to face the Zeke. Can't do anything about endurance.



The Skyrockets are your escort fighters. Until you get Hellcats you need something that can escort the Devastators and protect them on their torpedo runs in. The Skyrocket has the range, cruising speed, and the endurance to bodyguard the slow Devastators. The speed and sheer generated energy advantage the Skyrocket has over the Zeke, sort of levels the playing field somewhat with that Japanese fighter in a turning fight. You sacrifice altitude, and climb to achieve this; but since you will be fighting to cover your attack planes below 7000 meters, its the trade-off you can make for endurance and speed.

Next we'll look at tweaking the surface fleet.
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A little CHAOS is a GOOD thing.

This one is interesting, and I'll enjoy it.

Frank, if you tweak the fleet, do you think it's excessive to tweak the torpedoes hydrostatic ports and impact pistols?
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"You Will Know The Truth, And The Truth Will Set You Free"

Oh yeah. We send over a technical mission for some ITALIAN torpedoes in 1935!
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A little CHAOS is a GOOD thing.

I don't think sailing around raiding islands was "useless" on the part of Halsey, ect. at all.

Aside from becoming proficient in carrier warfare and operations it helped boost the morale of the fleet. Somebody was hitting back.

With four (relatively) trained up U.S. carrier air wings, though I'm not sure which ships you are saying are involved, I think the U.S. wins a tactical victory or stalemates the Japanese tactically (everything else, such as luck, decision making, and initiative, being equal). Either way, the U.S. still wins a strategic victory.
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"...and though we are not now that strength which in old days moved Earth and Heaven; that which we are, we are; one equal temper of heroic hearts, made weak by time and fate, but strong in will to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."
-Tennyson

Don't get me started on HALSEY.

Besides in this setup I'm using Kincaid, Fitch, and Fletcher. Those guys KNOW what they are doing.



Most of the US 1920 and 1930 era destroyers and cruisers were poorly designed and built. Without exception, the USN kept building in a reaction to what the BRITISH built, instead of building to our own national requirements.

Take the example of the US destroyers. Without exception the destroyers the USN procured had geared steam turbines and geared drives that were simply awful. From the 4 stackers to the Gridley Class, if you were part of the "black gang" you cursed the idiots who bought Bethlehem. geared turbines or the early Westinghouse and GE efforts. The Farraguts were really bad. Curtis turbines were the WORST.

Well anyway, the Fletchers and Sims are coming online but in the meantime you need a suitable long ranged escort for the carriers.

So take those horrible Omahas that are floating around uselessly and turn them into Didos. Note that you don't have destroyers running out of fuel on you in the middle of a carrier battle, if you do this?

A pair of them, also, will make good close AAA escorts for each carrier.

And while you are at it..........



You want to put the most powerful radar into these cruisers that you can, because these are your fighter director ships for your CAP control. Why do you think you put all that admiral's staff quarters aboard those tubs; just to make a $55 million yacht for a two star?

---------------------------------------------------------------

HEY! I just found out something I didn't know doing this bit of what-if. Not only did Spruance KILL the loser of Midway, Nagumo, Chuichi, during the Turkey Shoot, his forces also killed old Takagi, Takeo too. And who is Admiral Takagi, Takeo you ask? He was the Japanese officer in tactical command during the Battle of the Coral Sea................
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A little CHAOS is a GOOD thing.

Japanese and Americans did not think alike or fight alike at sea.

One of the most puzzling things that has always bothered me is this notion that just because you read Mahan means that you understand Mahan or even fight the way Mahan teaches you to fight.

A cursory read of the crazy stuff the Germans and British did to each other that led up to the Jutland debacle has to tell you that Mahan does not translate well to either the Reichs Marine or the Lords of the Admiralty.

How could you expect the Imperial General Headquarters or the DoN to think alike either?

Let me briefly explain what the Japanese thought the Great Pacific War would be.

The Japanese would attack and take European and American colonial possessions in the Pacific and Asia, conquer the terrain, fortify it, and then fight a defensive war to exhaust the colonial powers to the point where the colonial powers would negotiate a face saving peace. Japan would then use her new colonial possessions she obtained from the peace settlement, mainly Burma and Indonesia, because she was willing to negotiate on giving up the Philippines and the small American islands she would capture, if it would mollify the United States and allow her, Japan, to rape and pillage the British, French and Dutch possession, those which she had then left in her control for resources to conquer China.

What American would fight for EUROPEAN colonies? As long as the US got back her own she would sue for peace.

THAT was the Japanese calculation and how they tried to fight their Mahanic naval war.

It spilled over into their style of fighting. Go after enemy terrain, fortify and then exhaust his "war spirit" by forcing him to die many deaths for every inch he took back.

That is NOT Mahan: at least its not the Mahan the Americans know.

Mahan was not about specific objectives as much as he was about process. To him objectives may be ever changing but the central tenet of naval war is CONTROL THE BATTLESPACE

For men like Admiral Moffett, the architect of US naval aviation, that meant the airplane had to be used to deny the enemy the use of the sea, and secure it for the United States.

The Japanese were far more specific. They saw aircraft carriers as a naval means to attack and seize fixed objectives and positions.

Americans saw naval aviation as a means to control the sea.

Consider fleet organization.

The First Mobile Air Fleet is often called the first carrier task force because it was built to use the Japanese fleet carriers en masse as the primary strike weapon.

Logic dictates, that if that was the Japanese intent to use their carriers to control.their oceans; then they would keep their main force massed and ready to strike immediately to thwart any attempt by an enemy to enter into their waters and air space. It would be at sea actively destroying any enemy attempt to surge forces or build up his opposing sea-power.

How many follow up attacks did Nagumo make on Pearl?
How many follow up attacks did he make on Tricomalee and Mumbai after his one Indian Ocean raid?

Was he even at sea?

Now what were the Americans doing?

They were darting around everywhere poking everything Japanese with a stick, just trying to see what kind of battlespace defense the Japanese had set in place and seeing what the Combined Fleet would do about it when the Americans attacked.

Not much it turned out from January to May 1942.

You see the Japanese had a programmed checklist of objectives to conquer......They burned up a lot of carefully IJN hoarded gas wiping ABDA out and conquering the Dutch in Indonesia. The IJN wasn't on battle call for the Philippines, That was an IJA farce, mismanaged by Houma and MacArthur. The IJN FMAF had trounced the American battleline; so there was no Pacific Jutland in the works to worry IGH navy types, The IJN more or less rode at anchor while it watched the crazy Americans burn gas and wear out planes making pinprick attacks of no consequence............
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Until Doolittle.

Poke them with a stick. Get their navy to come out and FIGHT beyond their sortie radius logistics reach where we can meet them on near equal terms in OUR battlespace and KILL their FMAF.

Mannstein would call it OFF THE BACKHAND. Nimitz called it a carrier ambush.

Its all about who CONTROLS the battlespace for a disciple of MAHAN.

Next we'll discuss American 1941 carrier tactics and why I think that will change this time around for the Coral Sea Replay.
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A little CHAOS is a GOOD thing.

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How vulnerable is a WW II aircraft carrier?

Its designed like a cruiser since it has to have wind over the deck to launch planes.

Aside from that though no two navies design their carriers the same way or USE them the same way.

Let's look at two real examples:



Hiryu



Soryu

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/japan/soryu-cv-specs.htm

The Japanese certainly had different ideas about aircraft carrier landing circuits!

They also had different ideas about how to service aircraft. Did you know that it was IJN practice to strike a plane below and arm it in the HANGER?

That is how they designed their bomb handling-like an industrial assembly line. Move the plane to the bomb instead of the bomb to the plane.

The carrier elevators were SLOW so that the process could be handled at the safe pace and tempo that Japanese efficiency calculated that plane arming crews could handle.

Makes for an interesting contrast with American practice. American WW II carriers rearm their planes on the FLIGHT DECK at hardstand spots. Bring the bomb to the plane. Takes a lot more people. Elevators have to be FAST. SPEED is everything. Get the plane off the landing circuit hardstanded, fueled, and back into the circuit on its launch spot and get it off. It might never be struck below during a battle, but it might be launched short on gas and out of ammo to clear the deck of a carrier preparing to receive an enemy attack!

Just where were all those Japanese planes Fuchida said cluttered the decks of Nagumo's carriers at Midway when the Dauntlesses bounced him?

Either aloft awaiting permission to come aboard or inside the hangers lined up nose to tail waiting to be fueled and armed and hoisted to the flight deck to take off and attack Spruance.

Those four Japanese carriers could have survived, if their aircraft exploded on their flight decks. There was endless sky and the blast would go UP.

MCClusky's bombers punched their bombs into Nagumo's hangers where the planes actually were. That is why we get stories of Japanese carrier flight decks being blown into the air, and whole sections being folded back where American bombs hit. The carriers, even if they could have been towed back to Japan, were total write offs with their hangers and chunks of their hull blown out.. That is why so many Japanese pilots died. They were with their planes, in the hanger where the explosions were.

The Japanese NEVER learned.
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A little CHAOS is a GOOD thing.

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You know her?

Shes' the Enterprise.

There are detail differences between her, the inept Hornet, and the unlucky Yorktown, but she was very much what an American carrier of the era was supposed to be-her hanger deck was her strength deck while her flight deck was superstructure. As hard as the Europeans and the Japanese looked at this, they couldn't figure it out. Why build a landing platform on TOP of the ship instead of as part of it?

Shrug. It was the way the Langley was built and nobody thought to change it.

The Essex would have the amidship deck edge lift, but there was nothing too dissimilar about American carrier layout and practice between Yorktown and Essex . Three elevators- one was strike below for machine shop work and plane fuselage repair- one was for bombs, and third was the feeder. SPEED was everything. The American carriers carried far more bomb monkeys than their Japanese and British counterparts. Most rearming was done in place where the plane was on the flight deck. Now you see why half of USS Franklin's plane park went to glory and she still sailed to Puget Sound? Her citadel held though her flight deck was torn to bits and a third of her crew died.

The Left HAND circuit is British invented, but they seemed to have got this right entirely by accident. Most Humans are right eye dominate in that that is their scanning eye. Mister Carrier therefore sports a starboard island.

No bizarro Japanese experiments with American carriers having left hand and right hand circuits. Instead the Americans just stacked themselves up by altitude per carrier and landed odd even depending on the orbit.

Japanese tended to try to fight their carriers in pairs until they finally consolidated their carriers in massed groups. Of course having more hulls with smaller air wings (about 55 planes on average) the Japanese. to mass the fifty to hundred or so plane strikes they needed, would pair carriers.

Notice that the Americans because of their shortage of hull numbers and the size of their airwings would operate singly?

There was also another reason, the Americans operated spread out with carriers as far apart as mutually CAPs would permit.

Lousy fighters.

Every Fleet Problem the USN ran from 1928 until 1938 ended the same way. The defending carrier was SUNK. The attack planes were too fast and they came in too low or at too steep a slant for the defending American fighters of the day to stop.

That was why the USN became very excited about anti-aircraft guns in 1932 long before the British and the Germans discovered it for themselves during the Mediterranean follies.

The Japanese from the Claude on, didn't have that problem, or so they thought.

An effective fighter defense is more effective; if you mass your fighters. To the Japanese-massed fighters=massed carriers.

The American carrier captains, because they didn't have fast battleships who could stay with them as bodyguards, were more used to running for their lives, and using rain, clouds, distance, separation from each other, ANY TRICK to try to HIDE from "Orange" dive bombers and heavy cruisers during a Fleet Problem.

They were still sunk.

So dispersal and independent operations became American 1941 doctrine.

That is why you have American carriers running all over the place separated by hundreds of miles from each other poking at the Japanese. If one carrier was caught it wouldn't be a catastrophe.

As it was at the Coral Sea for the Japanese pair who were caught TOGETHER.

They never learned.
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A little CHAOS is a GOOD thing.

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Japanese carrier tactics 1941.

These principles govern their carrier employment.

Surprise attack.

The objective must be caught unaware and struck before it can organize an air response. Once the objective's air defense is destroyed then the objective's surface installations are destroyed. Then the raid mission is over.

Sufficient force to the objective need. (Economy of force)

The objective requires only that naval forces needed to allow the army to land and capture it or to neutralize the objective for the desired time needs to be used.

These two principles dominated Japanese naval tactics as they troed to carry out Japanese strategy.

Parceling out carriers.

The Japanese took their target list in 1942 and for the first six months parceled out their fleet to achieve their objectives in a simultaneous movement that still today is taught in European Naval academies as the model for the economy of force and resources.

It was brilliant. While Nagumo carried out his two primary missions-smash Pearl Harbor and clear the British out of the Indian Ocean for a while, the rest of the IJN surface navy landed and supported multiple landings.

But the Americans noticed something......

Wake Island put up a stronger than expected fight. The first Japanese force was mauled. The Americans sent a relief force to try and save the garrison, but Admiral Pye chickened out and Halsey was ordered back.

What the Americans noticed though was that the Japanese FMAF had detached just a couple of carriers, a couple of cruisers and a few destroyers to reinforce the Japanese bumblers who bungled Wake for ROUND TWO.

Then Nagumo took the rest of the FMAF merrily back to Japan to sake celebrate Pearl Harbor at Hashimajura Anchorage.

??????????????????????????????????

The Japanese had deliberately split forces within the logistics reach of an enemy fleet and they left behind insufficient forces to face that fleet if the fleet had chosen to fight in its own battlespace. The rest of the fleet had airily sailed away confident in their own superiority and that their enemy lacked the "war spirit" to seize an opportunity.

The odds presented were EVEN.

The USN had something then that most other navies lacjk and continue to lack to this day-a general staff.

Not an admiralty- A GENERAL STAFF.

The NGS saw an exploit. There wasn't much they could do about it for the moment.

The IJN were out of reach and the word for the day was DEFENSE, but the Japanese showed a tactical weakness.

How to exploit?

How could you prod the Japanese into doing something stupid like they did at Wake again?

Captain Francis Low, an NGS ASW specialist, came up with the harebrained scheme.

Bomb Japan with aircraft carriers.

The Americans set about this enterprise,

Meanwhile PACFlt, completely in the dark about this, kept poking at the Japanese trying to set up a local battle where the USN could chew off a chunk of the IJN.

One of the favorite places to poke was the Marshalls and the Carolines.

Another so called low risk area was the eastern Solomon Islands.

Halsey took low risk area one.

Fitch and Fletcher took low risk area two.

Hit and run, harass the Japanese enough, get the Japanese to react locally to an OBJECTIVE, so that the USN could ambush them with land and carrier based air power.

It WORKED.

The USN got its chance when the Japanese decided that New Guinea's Port Moresby was to tough to take through the Owen Stanley Mountains and the Americans were too pesky in the Eastern Solomons to risk leaving New Guinea undecided.
New Guinea featuring Port Moresby

The Japanese reaction.

The Japanese screw everything up.

The Japanese only allocated what they thought the local objective needed.

Remember that. The Americans did.
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A little CHAOS is a GOOD thing.

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I'm not good with Pacyfic, so I wont comment on the Japs chances to win, but that is about Europe:

Quote:

It also did what a Stuka could not do ever; it won a war in five minutes.

It's quite stupid comment. Stuka never had a chance(!) to "win" the war in five minutes.
_________________
Oginski , the polonaise, Farewell to Homeland

Religion: error 501 of human intelligence
Religion: allows adults with imaginary friends to rule humanity

Mechanics.......

Meet the A6M:

http://www.chuckhawks.com/zero_A6M.htm

Quote:

Even given its technical and numerical inferiority, in the hands of an accomplished pilot the Zero remained a formidable adversary right to the end of the war. For example, the Japanese ace Saburo Sakai blundered alone into a formation of 15 Hellcats during the defense of Iwo Jima. By that time Sakai was debilitated by war wounds and blind in one eye, but in a very long running dogfight fight the Hellcat pilots could not nail his agile Zero fighter. In fact, after he finally made it home, completely exhausted, his astonished ground crew inspected his plane and discovered that not a single enemy bullet had hit the ace's Zero! In his book Samurai Saburo Sakai tells the story of another incredible air battle. In February 1945 the ace Kinsuke Muto, alone in his Zero, attacked 12 Corsair fighters. In the course of the wild dogfight that ensued, Muto shot down 4 Corsairs before running out of ammunition and escaping. Such battles, like the Zero fighter itself, are the stuff of legend.

Those were F4U CORSAIRS!

The Zeke has friends:

The B5N Kate:

http://pwencycl.kgbudge.com/B/5/B5N_Kate.htm

and the D3A Val,

http://www.aviastar.org/air/japan/aichi_d3a.php

Note that the Japanese strike planes were not that good?

The Kate had problems with horizontal stability and the Val had a vicious tendency to snap roll never quite completely cured with its improved tail and wing modifications.

The key thing to note is that it took a Japanese strike a good forty minutes to form up and then they all traveled together to the target at a speed of about 92.5 meters per second to reach their intended victims.

Curiously since the Japanese Val dive bombers were not that good, the Japanese, like the British, tended to emphasize the Kate torpedo plane for anti-ship strike.

This goes against war experience though where the Val scored a PK of 60-80% of bomb hits-which was better than the Dauntless PK of 50% by the way.

The Nate by contrast which the Japanese (and the Americans) expected to score a PK of 25% actually scored about 18%.

As a rough rule of thumb, the Japanese had you in range when you were within 3600 flight seconds of them at 90 meters per second cruise. That is about 400 kilometers strike radius.

Note that the three Japanese aircraft had a deliberate design feature to economically cruise burdened at around 90 meters per second at around 4000 meters for at least four hours in the air?

The Devastator, Wildcat and Dauntless don't do this. Devastator likes 60 meters per second at 2500 meters altitude, Dauntless likes 75 meters per second higher up around 4300 meters, and Wildcat is comfortable at 100 meters per second at 5000 meters.

The Americans have a big practical naval air problem-called effective radius endurance-measured as time in the air.

Dauntless 330 kilometers and 5500 seconds one way out, combat, and back.
Devastator 288 kilometers and 4800 seconds one way, combat, and back.
Wildcat 310 kilometers and 3100 seconds one way, combat, and back.

In terms of 1941 carrier combat, somebody screwed up the American naval requirement.

Looking at a different solution.

Quote:

General characteristics of Aquila Type: Aircraft carrier Displacement: 23,500 long tons (23,900 t) standard 27,800 long tons (28,200 t) full load Length: 235.5 m (772 ft 8 in) Beam: 30 m (98 ft 5 in) Draught: 7.3 m (23 ft 11 in) Propulsion: 8 boilers, 4 turbines, 4 shafts 151,000 hp (112,600 kW) Speed: 30 knots (35 mph, 56 km/h) Range: 5,500 nmi (10,200 km) at 18 kn (21 mph, 33 km/h) Complement: 1,420 (107 officers) Armament: • 8 × 135 mm (5.3 in)/45 caliber guns • 12 × 65 mm (2.6 in)/64 caliber guns • 132 × 20 mm (0.79 in)/65 caliber AA guns Armour: Deck: 80 mm (3.1 in) Aircraft carried: 66

And of course the aircraft to go with it:



http://www.historyofwar.org/articles/weapons_reggiane_re2002.html

Quote:

Regianne 2002 Ariete Engine: Piaggio P.XIX RC.45 14-cylinder air-cooled radial Horsepower: 1180hp (880 kW) Span: 36 ft 1in (10,98 m) Length: 26ft 9.5in (8.15 m) Max Speed: 329mph at 18,000ft, 267mph at sea level (542k/h @ 5500 meters or 440k/h @ 1000 meters) Range: 684 miles (1120 km) Ceiling: 36,000ft (11,000m) Armament: two 12.7mm and two 7.7mm Breda-SAFAT machine guns Payload: One 160kg (352lb) bomb under each wing and one 650kg (1,422lb) bomb under the fuselage for a total of 2,095lbs. Alternately it could also carry one torpedo.

Of what 1937 US plane does that remind you?

The P-35>>>>>>>>>>>>

Quote:

Specifications (P-47D Thunderbolt) General characteristics * Crew: One * Length: 36 ft 1 in (11.00 m) * Wingspan: 40 ft 9 in (12.42 m) * Height: 14 ft 8 in (4.47 m) * Wing area: 300 ft² (27.87 m²) * Empty weight: 10,000 lb (4,536 kg) * Loaded weight: 17,500 lb (7,938 kg) * Max takeoff weight: 17,500 lb (7,938 kg) * Powerplant: 1× Pratt & Whitney R-2800-59 twin-row radial engine, 2,535 hp (1,890 kW) Performance * Maximum speed: 433 mph at 30,000 ft (697 km/h at 9,145 m) * Range: 800 miles combat, 1,800 mi ferry (1,290 km / 2,900 km) * Service ceiling 43,000 ft (13,100 m) * Rate of climb: 3,120 ft/min (15.9 m/s) Armament * 8 x .50 cal (12.7 mm) M2 Browning machine guns * Up to 2,500 lb (1134 kg) of bombs * 10 x 5 in (127 mm) unguided rockets

Only one problem.......the P-47 is TOO BIG and it lands TOO FAST for a carrier aircraft.

So now what?

Quote:

Specifications (F6F-5 Hellcat) General characteristics * Crew: 1 * Length: 33 ft 7 in (10.24 m) * Wingspan: 42 ft 10 in (13.06 m) * Height: 13 ft 1 in (3.99 m) * Wing area: 334 ft² (31 m²) * Airfoil: NACA 23015.6 mod root; NACA 23009 tip * Empty weight: 9,238 lb (4,190 kg) * Loaded weight: 12,598 lb (5,714 kg) * Max takeoff weight: 15,415 lb (6,990 kg) * Powerplant: 1× Pratt & Whitney R-2800-10W "Double Wasp" two-row radial engine with a two-speed two-stage supercharger, 2,000 hp (1,491 kW [34]) * Propellers: 3-blade Hamilton Standard o Propeller diameter: 13 ft 1 in (4.0 m) * * Fuel capacity: 250 U.S. gal (946 L) internal; up to 3x 150 U.S. gal (568 L) external drop tanks * Zero-lift drag coefficient: 0.0211 * Drag area: 7.05 ft² (0.65 m²) * Aspect ratio: 5.5 Performance * Maximum speed: 330 knots (380 mph, 610 km/h) * Stall speed: 73 knots (84 mph, 135 km/h) * Combat radius: 820 nm (945 mi, 1,520 km) * Ferry range: 1,330 nm (1,530 mi, 2,460 km) * Service ceiling 37,300 ft (11,370 m) * Rate of climb: 3,500 ft/min (17.8 m/s) * Wing loading: 37.7 lb/ft² (184 kg/m²) * Power/mass: 0.16 hp/lb (260 W/kg) * Time-to-altitude: 7.7 min to 20,000 ft (6,100 m) * Lift-to-drag ratio: 12.2 * Takeoff roll: 799 ft (244 m) Armament * Guns: o either 6× 0.50 in (12.7 mm) M2 Browning machine guns, with 400 rounds/gun, (All F6F-3, and most F6F-5) o or 2× 20 mm cannon, with 225 rounds/gun o and 4× 0.50 in (12.7 mm) Browning machine guns with 400 rounds/gun (F6F-5N only) * Rockets: o 6 × 5 in (127 mm) HVARs or o 2 × 11¾ in (298 mm) Tiny Tim unguided rockets * Bombs: up to 4,000 lb (1,800 kg) full load, including: o Bombs or Torpedoes:(Fuselage mounted on centreline rack) + 1 × 2,000 lb (910 kg) bomb or + 1 × Mk.13-3 torpedo; o Underwing bombs: (F6F-5 had two additional weapons racks either side of fuselage on wing centre-section) + 1 × 1,000 lb (450 kg) or + 2 × 250 lb (110 kg) + 6 × 100 lb (45 kg)

But we don't GET Hellcats until 1943. Next, we'll see what I can come up with to fix this.

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