Old Warbirds

[whoseroundisit]

Did fighter pilots in WW2 and korea stage around their patrol area with the canopy open and only close the canopy to attack the baddies, or is this just Hollywood.
Bob

[effortless]

Pa said that he would never have done so as fuel consuption, cold and handling were all affected with the canopy back. He flew Spits, Hurris and Typhoons.

[MadsDad]

And they're still at it. Watched Independence Day with t'Lad and the comments when the President led the attack on the alien craft were quite entertaining:-

"Good bit of close formation that. One incoming should get at least half-a-dozen of them"

"Very handy wearing your mask unclipped. Fat lot of use if you get a decompression"

I would post the comment he made when they were teaching the crop-duster to fly the F15 in 5 minutes but I don't want to overload the obscenity detector.


And finally, the scene with the RAF "yeah, I wondered where we kept the twin-tails".

[Kitbag]

I think it very much depends. There were the generation of British pilots brought up on open cockpit fighters- Gauntlet, Bulldog etc, who may have found their lookout more limited by the canopies than they would have liked. I recall reading somewhere (no reference to hand so take it with a pinch of salt) there were also issues wth opening the canopies of early marks of Spitfire, especially when the fuel tank in front of your knees was on fire, in order to get out in a hurry. Some nations-the Italians most notably but also Russia, were very slow to adopt enclosed cockpits. Me109, 110, 210, 410 pilots couldn't as the canopy/panels would have disappeared quite rapidly, but Fw190 pilots could, and perhaps did. As you look further forward most USN carrier aircraft in the '50's were usually catapulted with canopy open to ease escape if it went quiet as one shot over the bow. You have picked a broad (20 year) timespan when a lot of things were happening in aviation. Perhaps narrowing down the question to specific types/nations/conflicts would help you find an answer.

[Evalu8ter]

Picking up on Kitbags point, at least one Italian fighter, the Macchi-Castoldi MC200, started life with an enclosed canopy only for pilots to complain about lookout/egress. Consequent production versions were completed without canopies!

Again, as Kitbag suggests, a lot of the Italian complaints were part of the uneasy transition from nimble bi-planes to faster, but less manoeuvrable, mono-planes.

[Dick Whittingham]

A respected Flight Commander on our Squadron told me that, ex Spifires and P47s in Burma he would take off with the canopy open to leave a clear escape path from a crash on take-off. He added that on converting to our Vampires no one told him to shut the canopy, so he took off with it open and then found the air loads stopped him from closing it

Dick

[snapper41]

In his book 'Angels 22 - Self-portrait of a Fighter Pilot', George Barclay (249 Sqn, Hurricanes) says that he would open his canopy before attacking as 'one could see 50% better that way'.

[Lima Juliet]

Used to fly the JP mk3 with the canopy open until I lost all my maps one sunny afternoon!

LJ