So you don’t think the USN leadership was right?
The Skyhawk was a sharp little auxiliary daylight fighter. The best air defense mission use of a Corsair would have been using its range and send it against the enemy airfields.
Like the Corsair, it lacked a radar, a severe limitation in an air to air role. Was it more agile than the Corsair?
You are right that the “destroyers” of the Navy since the introduction of the F4H-1 were geared all towards Bear. A direction chosen when they decided against the F8U-3.
A sensible choice surely, given the Soviet threat?
And it was also the 1950’s Navy policy decision in favour of the super carriers designed for near-strategic nuclear strike aircraft (they never really carried) vs Essex/Midway sized medium carriers with tactical strike capability, that made big fighters possible and in Navy logic neccessary.
Big carriers = high sorties rates surely?
The Navy always did, and still does, max out the size and scope of the toys they want and afterwards they bitch that they don’t have enough of them and that they need something cheaper. Just remember that the Intruder was bought as the Skyraider light/medium replacement, but slipped into the heavy role when they had to buy the “light” Corsair to generate enough strikes. Same with the Tomcat – Hornet combo, when first they wanted all-Grumman-carriers but didn’t have the money and had to get that second, cheaper plane.
Surely the Intruder was developed as all night/all day/all weather attack aircraft with sophisticated avionics for finding and attack both surface (ie seaborne ones – enemy ships) and ground targets – a different role from the Corsair’s light atack role? As for the Hornet, wasn’t there a need for a Corsair replacement as well as something to augment the mighty Tomcat?
The Navy was just lucky that they never had to prove their F-14 destroyers in their envisioned role against cruise missile Blackjacks. And with the introduction of the Oscar boats even that primary role was basically dead.
We all were as it would have been World War Three! However, the Hawkeye/Tomcat/Pheonix combination would have offered the best possible defence for resupply convoys in the Atlantic.
And with the introduction of the Oscar boats even that primary role was basically dead.
The Bears and their cruise missiles were no longer a threat?
And these days the Navy is pushing the LHAs and LHDs into the traditional role of the Essex carriers for lowly real-world needs, making them the busiest vessels in the fleet, so as to max out the size of the gold plated blue water SURNAV toys, in total disregard if it makes sense for the overall forces. It’s a big ego problem and a lack of political leadership.
Eh? Explain.
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