From my understanding, naval aircraft in world war 2 tended to be lighter and more maneuverable due to STOL requirements. What’s the reason that post-war jets ended up the opposite – with Banshee, sea venom, panther, demon sea hawk being heavier than land-based contemporaries?

Question

This seems to contrast pretty heavily with the corsair/hellcat/wildcat vs thunderbolt/mustang maneuverability and weight and acceleration.

In: Technology

Answer 1

They took off under their own power in WW2. That meant there were lots of sacrifices in terms of weight that had to be made to make sure they could take off safely.

As the steam catapult was applied to carriers we were able to overcome the obstacle of taking off under a planes own power. This let us dramatically increase the weapons and fuel payload of aircraft. But part of the tradeoff to do that was to make the aircraft more robust so that it could handle the tremendous force applied by the catapult and by the arresting wires when it was launched and recovered respectively.

This [YouTube video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRgF4XjcVww) illustrates the landing differences well between the two sorts of aircraft.

Answer 2

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Answer 3

Catapult assisted take-off but arrested recovery ‘CATOBAR’ puts an increased pressure on the aircraft compared to a conventional runway ‘CTOL’. Meaning that a carrier based aircraft needs to be made sturdier than the conventional alternative. The Carrier based F35 weigh about 19% more than the airfield based variant, mostly due to it’s wing area being 47% larger. Presumably the structure of the airplane is sturdier as well adding weight.

This might shift again come next generation Jet aircraft in 3-4 decades. As the US is adopting an electromagnetic catapult system on its newest carrier. At current pace it will take 40-50 years for the US to have an all electromagnetic catapult carrier fleet, assuming the US wishes to maintain the same amount of carriers in the future.

Also, it is not always true that WW2 naval aircraft were lighter than land based ones. Going off the US. The F4F was lighter than the P40, but the F6F was heavier than the P51. Significantly heavier even. But both naval aircraft had a larger wing surface area.

An easier comparison is the British Spitfire vs the Seafire, since the Seafire is a land based fighter adapted for carrier use as opposed to the US fighters where they made aircraft specifically designed for carrier use from scratch. But here is often the same story, the Seafire is generally a bit heavier than the Spitfire in a loaded configuration. Although there are many variants of both,