Why the USAAF gave up on the A-36 in favour of the P-47.

[tcolvin]

According to 'Jane's 1945/46'; "Owing to poor performance at height the Mustang I (P-51) was re-mustered as a low-altitude reconnaissance fighter and posted to the RAF Army Co-operation Command ....... an oblique camera for tactical photographic reconnaissance was installed ..... first operational with ACC on July 27, 1942".

In other words, the RAF realised it had ordered an air-superiority Mustang that did not perform, so got rid of them to ACC and asked for the Mustang III (P-51B) with the Merlin.

Jane's states; "The original conversion was made in GB by RR by the installation of the Merlin 61 in the Mustang II. The success of the conversion was such that steps were immediately taken by NAA to re-design the P-51 to take the 1,520 hp Packard V-1650-3 (Packard-built Merlin 68 with two-speed two stage supercharger and aftercooler). The airframe was strengthened ........".

The RAF had begun its trick of getting rid of under-performing air-superiority fighters (Allison Mustangs,Typhoons and Spitfires) by over-selling them to the army as ground support Tac-R and fighter-bombers.
It got rid of accurate dive-bombers such as the Henley and Vengeance to target-towing duties. The RAF could not foresee the time when the GAF had lost command of the sky over the Reich and with it the means of shooting down conventional dive-bombers.

Also the RAF convinced itself that high-speed fighters could perform neither vertical dive-bombing nor long-range bomber escorting, even when faced with the contrary evidence. The RAF managed to suppress news of the success of the A-36 and Vengeance, but had to accept the success of the P-51B (and the earlier P-47) when it started in January 1944 to operate as a fighter over Germany on bomber escort duties and to destroy the GAF.

The A-36 was a weapon system that could have had a strategic impact and ended the war in 1943. It was cheap enough to be produced in volume, and accurate enough and with sufficient range to destroy the 100 or so electricity generating stations on which German war production relied. The vulnerability of the German electricity system to such an attack was highlighted in the postwar USAAF Strategic Bombing Survey.

Tony