The Piper fighter.

https://www.flyingmag.com/when-piper-built-a-warbird/

Noel

This would have been effective against ground forces in Viet Nam. Oh well!

 

Bill W

1 hour ago, BillW said:

This would have been effective against ground forces in Viet Nam. Oh well!

Probably not, the PLA, NVA and the VC had some pretty heavy anti-aircraft weaponry, notably the ZSU-57-2 and the AZP S-60, which were supplied in very large numbers by the Soviets when they realised how effective these things are at engaging stuff below the ideal target altitude of SAMS to ensure complete coverage of altitudes from ground level up to about 60,000 feet. Either of these two AAA systems would probably easily knock down a PA-48 if it got a few strikes on it, which given these things had a 6,000 metre range and a 3,281 foot per second muzzle velocity, where one or two of these rounds is often enough to take down an aeroplane, seems quite the possibility. Although not equipped with a radar guided fire control system themselves, they were usually deployed near SAM sites which did have this capability and could pass on their search radar data to the gun crews to ensure these guns were ready to shoot stuff when it came in range of their optical targeting systems. This is a large part of why the US lost well over 4,000 helicopters in the Vietnam War, not to mention a lot of fixed-wing assets too.

The PA-48 would possibly have been quite effective against more lightly armed militias in South America, which was really the kind of thing Piper were aiming for with its development, but as for SE Asia, it's difficult to imagine it would have been more robust than the considerably more heavily-constructed A1 Skyraider, which was itself fairly vulnerable to ground fire in that conflict as a result of frequently coming up against those aforementioned Soviet AAA systems.

It was studies of the A1 Skyraider, Ju-87 'Stuka' and the IL-2 Shturmovik, their utility in close support and resistance to ground fire, both good and bad, which led to the development of the A10 Thunderbolt II. Now that thing really is built to take hits and be very agile at low level. It's just a shame these were not available to Ukraine; because they would have finished that war in its first week, and would ultimately have saved thousands of civilian, and indeed military lives on both sides, in the process.

Edited July 6, 20223 yr by Chock

The last ditch effort to recycle surplus P-51 Mustang's into combat aircraft suitable for use in the early 1970's.  The PA-48 was such an extensive conversion that it shared very few parts with the P-51.