I understand your entire argument, but I disagree with the investment part.
The F8F was a plane with a higher price tag than the Hellcat and Corsair.
And this information is in the books mentioned.
If I’m buying a more expensive fighter to defend American aircraft carriers. I certainly wouldn’t skimp on weaponry.
The US slashed aircraft stocks, cancelled entire programs, rationalised resources, and scrapped fleets en masses. Just as it is today getting upgrades past the purse holders could be difficult with the war ended and the Navy already had their new fighter and now its expected to fight for cash to make the guns shoot a little faster at an enemy that no longer exist.
Politicians would say They got their shiny new toy, why do they want even more $$$? …,things never change.
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Probably just a bad book, happens frequently.
In Erection & Maintenance - F8F, AN01-85FD-2, 1-Apr-1950 is also confirmed to be M2
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F82 was used in korea and was an air force plane like the f86 sabre.
F8F did not see a single war use as an USA plane, only france used the F8F-1B in indochina.
But F8F was also a navy plane where M3 was not used, for example the F4U-4 and F7F were used in korea and did not get M3 .50, the navy just upgraded to the M3 20mm cannon.
The likehood of some random F8F-1 getting M3 while not being used in combat is non existant imo, we have to also consider that it was replaced by the F8F-2 quickly.
Its just a bad book, in that same page that you can see in the first post it also names M3 20mm as ‘‘Hispano’’ not giving any details…
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I was just putting forward that the time scale makes it possible, and the logic could be there. It seemed possible that if other planes like P-80 and P-51 had recieved the M3, It would make sense that the (probably) best naval fighter could as well. Really, I just want the .50 cal Bearcat moved back up where it belongs, and the M3 may have helped that case… I think I would prefer having the M2 machine guns anyways lol.
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Why install 12.7mm M3s in Sabres instead of 20mm cannons?
Obviously the M3 first had to be put into production and then there’s was a huge demand for all types of fighter and fighter-bomber for this armament.
Since the F8F-1 was a Naval aircraft that was used long after WW2, it makes perfect sense to have the guns upgraded to 12.7mm M3s at one point, especially since it only featured 4 guns.
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This is more of a USAAF vs USN thing though. The USAAF adopted cannons just much later, since the sabre was USAAF, it retained the .50s due to being more reliable and whatnot, whilst USN aircraft made the switch to 20mm (hispano derived, 20x110) cannons much earlier. And even when USAAF adopted cannons, it just had to be their own (20x102). At least in the modern era everything is vulcan though.
If anything, this makes only more sense that perhaps the .50 M3s are just a mixup from the 20mm M3 naming. I’m not sure if he F8F was still in major use in US service after WW2, but considering they already had cannon versions, there was probably little incentive to keep using the .50 cal ones. USAAF P-51 (then F-51s) were used in Korea however and apparently received .50 M3s. Seems to be more of a USAAF thing to mount the .50 M3s due to sticking to .50s over switching to cannons like the USN. Not that field modifications are impossible though, but I would like to see a report of being done, perhaps museum archives?
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Possible 🤔