Single engined torpedo fighters and fighter/dive b

[PMN1]

The FW190 was tested with a variety of torpdoes and I think there were plans to test a torpedo on Hellcats.

Were any single engines torpedo figther used operationally.

Could torpedoes have been fitted to the Fury/Sea Fury and Corsair?


The Mustang had a dive-bomber cousin - the Apache (though I am not sure how much actual dive bombing it did and I think I read its dive brakes were wired inoperative very early on), could other fighters e.g. Corsair, Thunderbolt, Fury, Typhoon etc have been fitted with dive brakes to produce a fighter dive bomber version alongside the fighter version and if so at what cost to performance?

Could they have been better than the actual dedicated dive-bombers actually used?

The P47M had dive flaps 'to maintain centre of pressure in a compressibility dive on a quarry' - could these be called dive brakes?

[GregP]

The big problem with "torpedo fighters" and "fighter dive bombers" is one of basic design.

To carry a 2000 pound (or heavier) torpedo, the airframe structure must be stressed to carry that weight in the normal fight envelope. That means a heavier structure designed to maneuver with considerable weight attached, hopefully at the center of gravity.

If the weight is long and large, it also affect stability, particularly directional stability.

So ... torpedo and dive bombers were designed with fins bigger than necessary so they could be stable with the load attached, and their structures were way heavier than necessary for the aircraft alone.

You will notice that the dedicated dive bombers and torpedo bombers of WWII did not have fighter-like performance. The reason is design related as stated above.

Fighters are, by design, NOT stressed to carry heavy load from a single or two attach points. To be designed as such, they would have to be built more like dive bombers ... and their performance would suffer to a large extent.

I believe the torpedos carried by the Fw 190 were much smaller than normal and the plane was designed from the outset to carry a certain bomb load. It was a brilliant design, but the Fw 190D and the Ta-152 series were NOT load carriers ... and these were the best of the Fw 190 "fighters" to fly.

To address some other questions, yes there were plans to try the Hellcat with a torpedo, but the size of the torpedo was critical.

There were plans to try a P-38 as well, but they realized the P-38 (and the Hellcat) would be sitting ducks for enemy fighters, and so would need fighter protection. If you are going to supply fighter protection for a fighter, why not go ahead and used a torpedo bomber to start with and use your fighters as they were intended?

This is a self-defeating argument.