Shipbucket

The Rare Bear attained 860 km/h. One standard military Bearcat reached 840 km/h.

R-2800 do not give you enough power to do that, even if you strip plane from all armor, weapons and most of fuel. Maybe in hard dive but never in straight flight. If "standard" F8F reach 840 km/h why they all not fly with 800-830 km/h speed ? Data say the max speed of serial build F8F was 740 km/h.

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Nobody expects the Imperial Inquisition!

He said one standard Bearcat.
I'm personally willing to bet that said 'standard' Bearcat was about as 'standard' as a mechanic friend of mine's 'standard' Volkswagen Jetta. Yes- everything under the hood says WV, but that doesn't mean that every moving part hasn't been timed to the nanosecond, injectors tweaked and altered ever so slightly, fuel/air mixes optimized and everything is hooked up to a computer once a week for some obligatory "what would this do" alterations.
These machines were the only things between their pilots and a horrible death- and their crew chiefs knew it. I doubt very seriously that fine-tuning to the point of insanity didn't occasionally occur with a good ground crew.

My M9 Beretta looked 'stock' - but when I left the Guard, the trigger spring and captured recoil spring that I put in went home with me... not to mention my personal mags (cause Army mags suck).

Few people in the military trust something at stock specs with their lives- we tinker with everything.

All true, Cart' all true. But you cant tune piston engine who give you max speed of 740 to 840 km/h this is just technically impossible. If you can take 740 to 800 km/h that would be miracle.

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Nobody expects the Imperial Inquisition!

I see the topic is now the 'ultimate single engined prop fighter', so no contest; the post war developments certainly took the concept as far as it could go, but unfortunately by then this was a blind alley with the onset of jet powered fighters. By 'best', I would redifine the subject as 'best all round', as in having the best fighter when it was needed. In that sense the Hurricane would probably beat the Spitfire in 1940 in RAF service because it was incredibly tough and easier to manufatcture and repair. So if we were to say - best WWII fighter, I'd still stand by the Mustang

Thank you for all the discussion and advice especially from PB
for the other category I agree with what you said about it but I didn't expect people to include early and mid war fighters to the mix as that wasn't my intention ( nothing wrong with those opinions though)
so change the subject to best all around
PB i also agree as I stated in my initial post that they were already outdated
I also don't mean best WWll fighter as much as I mean most capable piston engined fighter
ALso RHade maybe I miss understood you but all of the choices are either very late war or post war

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Projects:
Zealandia AU
John Company AU
References and feedback is always welcome!

There is "other" option, and this give us a BIG choice.

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Nobody expects the Imperial Inquisition!

very true I see your point any recommendations to improve the "other" option

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Projects:
Zealandia AU
John Company AU
References and feedback is always welcome!

Gotta go with the Hellcat on this one.

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Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid. - Albert Einstein
The only stupid questions are the ones that go unasked.
Korean AU

I would have chosen the P-47, so I chose the P-51.

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Salide - Denton - The Interrealms

I am not very active on the forums anymore, but work is still being done on my AUs. Visit the Salidan Altiverse Page on the SB Wiki for more information. All current work is being done on Google Docs.
If anyone wishes for their nations to interact with the countries of the Salidan Altiverse, please send me a PM, after which we can further discuss through email.