Drachinifel - naval history

1. Skua, Fulmar and Firefly met an RN multirole and navigation requirement.
2. The RAF was weighted toward simple metropolitan target defense interceptors.
3. The FAA was 'backwards' compared to the IJN and the USN who trained their pilots to 'dead reckon' their way out and back off compass and chart. It was called 'dead reckon' because if the pilot screwed up his chart navigation, the American navy reckoned he was dead. 
4. Engine tech in the early 1930s and the 2 seaters which emerged from 1-3 reasons above. 
5. By 1939 the FAA and RAF both realized they screwed up. Their referent enemy was the Luftwaffe.
6. N839 was an evolved Skua and the Fulmar and then they wake up in 1940. Supermarine submitted a Spitfire mod based on the Griffon. Fairey submitted a proposal and the FAA likes it, selects that one and screws it up.
7. Churchill wants to meddle and wants air-based port defense. The FAA now looks at Spitfire again. The air ministry nixed it and the Seafire is bollixed again.   
8. The Sabre engine was a dog badly engineered. And the Spitfire will not fit it.
9. Third time around, not second, is pure panic-time. Churchill is now Prime Minister and the Air Ministry is lit on fire. HMS Indomitable is his wake-up. 
10. And we have the third try at Seafire. Which plane is a dog as a aircraft carrier borne fighter. Bad as the Wildcat is, the Grumman bird is the better bird which is why the FAA gobbled it up like chocolates at the same time the Seafire is fudged together. The FAA then drive the armament and armor mods to the Grumman bird and they managed to screw that bird thoroughly up as the now named Martlet, costing the USNAS heavily as the F4F2Fs become 4Fs and lose whatever little vertical and horizontal maneuverability they have against the A6M. The Americans are willing to fly without armor because the 20mm cannon on a Zero makes the armor useless and a pilot killer.  The Wildcat has to be able to go into a powered vertical fight in order to stay with an A6M. Since a BuAir idiot (John Tower) decrees the USN will buy the British customer version Wildcat, that fat heavy bird will cost the USNAS about 500 fighter pilots in 1942. Once he is fired, the PACFLT will promptly strip out the armor and the extra guns out and lighten the 4Fs to obtain lost 2F performance back.    

Summary of the history? The British have to learn how to do it, "the American Way" and they will largely equip with American birds. We see the results by the way the FAA chooses to equip out by plane choices as the war on-goes. Plane to ship interface for the Seafire, pilot ergonomics, and plane traps, as well as vertical fight performance, was totally "unacceptable" against the best naval competitors which until late 1943 were still Japanese aircraft. The FAA was incompetent as a CAP ATC manager at Okinawa. The video is flatly wrong about this description. The Seafires made 50% intercepts, versus Corsairs and Hellcats 75%.  The FAA only handled 400 inbounds. They allowed 200+ leakers. This is against about 4000 raiders and 1000 leakers allowed by TF 58. It must also be remarked that the British CAP was not just Seafires in their BPF effort as they flew Corsairs and Hellcats as well, so it was probably a procedural and operational process failure more than the plane. which allowed such small raid efforts to hit as many British flattops as the Japanese hit American aircraft carriers.  

And let us face it, Grumman knew what they were doing with naval aircraft. Supermarine simply could not. Not under the hurried and panicked conditions with which the Seafire conversions was hurriedly designed.  They did rather well with what a muddle the British air ministry handed them, but it would have been better if the FAA had pushed the gull winged Spitfire at first try or tacked onto the Corsair earlier.