Tactical Nuclear Bombers vs Fighter-Bombers

[KJ_Lesnick]

The USAF largely at first used fighters that it deemed inadequate for superiority (F-84, F-100) in the nuclear bombing role as well as some F-86 variants.

The USN used some jets (F2H, some FJ-4's) for tactical nuclear bombing because they were faster than the propeller driven aircraft they had initially (Douglas AD), though once they had the A4D, they seemed to takeover this particular role with the FJ-4's tagging along

The USAF eventually started building fighter bombers like the F-105 which was not a fighter that was simply inadequate -- it was designed from the outset to fly fast, low, and far and deliver a nuke: ACM ability was basically secondary and largely to escape fighters and or get rid of them on their way to the target.  While there were planes like the F-104 which were designed as a fighter-interceptor, soon enough the F-104C was built into a fighter-bomber which wasn't a big deal as it could still function as a fighter.  The USAF didn't seem to like the idea of building a small light-bomber type of airplane for tactical missions with the exception of the B-57 (and all were twin engines -- was there some requirement that all tactical bombers gotta be single engined) -- all the rest were fighter-bombers.

The USN continued building attack planes like the A4D/A-4 and A-6.  Admittedly the F-4 was a fighter-bomber, but it's not clear how much of this was by design or by the fact that McDonnell seemed more interested in selling something to the Navy than actually building a good plane (The plane was originally designed to be a fighter, then an attack plane, then an all-weather interceptor with a secondary air to ground role; then an attack plane when the fighter budget ran out and more hard-points were added; then re-designated a fighter once money flooded back into the fighter department and the air-to-ground armament still remained).

Opinions

[Dizzyfugu]

IMHO, there was no real "plan" behind the equipment development between USN an USAF. I think that many aircraft were "pushed" into new roles as the conflict theatre changed. After WWII, high altitude, subsonic bombers were the way to go. A-bombs were huge and heavy, too. On the other side, you needed agile fighters with ever higher speed and climb of rate to intercept them.

Then came the SAM, and also the guided AAM. The big bombers became vulnerable, fighters became even faster and guns disappeared. On the other side, this called for low level operations underneath the radar. A-bombs became smaller, so that fighters like the MiG-19 or the FJ-1 Fury could carry them, so there were trials to change these aircraft roles', and some special types evolved, built around the smaller nuclear weapons. The F-105 was such a design, as well as the F-107 or the A-5.

[Mr.Creak]

It's quite simple - though not necessarily logical ¹.
The USAF, like most air forces, had/ still has an aversion (mostly "cultural" ²) to moving mud for the pongoes ⁴.
The USN, on the other hand, is/ has been about power projection - wrecking stuff on foreign shores (and as far inland as possible ⁵), AFAIK every USN attack type from the Skyraider onwards has been nuclear capable, coupled with a good relationship with the Marines (i.e. they know the value of CAS/ BAI, which could lend "credulity" to tactical ops).
There's also probably a touch of "nukes are strategic" and if a tactical aircraft can carry a nuke then Congress won't fund our big shiny prestigious strategic bomber force.

1 Unless you subscribe to varying values of "logical".
2 It's not our job - we fight in the sky! ³
3 OTOH the Army shouldn't be allowed to have fixed-wing aircraft because flying them is our job.
4 Which is why most new designs since WWII specified, either explicitly or implicitly, "not a pound for air to ground".
5 Why do we need an air force? - we can reach as far inland as they can.

[PR19_Kit]

4 Which is why most new designs since WWII specified, either explicitly or implicitly, "not a pound for air to ground".

Which is why there's such a design as the F-15E of course. [Sarcasm mode off] 

[Mr.Creak]

Which is why there's such a design as the F-15E of course. [Sarcasm mode off] 

The funny part here is that the very first time I came across the that phrase was reading Brab (pre Personal View days) in an early issue of Air International (probably one of the issues in volume 1, back when it was still called Air Enthusiast) and he was discussing the F-15 design requirements - IIRC before it had even flown.
If they'd known then...

[scooter]

Which is why there's such a design as the F-15E of course. [Sarcasm mode off] 

If they'd known then...

Blame some enterprising young Air Force types (back when they had them) who looked at the B model and said "Hey, we can hang bombs on this."

The USAF, like most air forces, had/ still has an aversion (mostly "cultural" ²) to moving mud for the pongoes ⁴.
2 It's not our job - we fight in the sky! ³

In some ways that holds very true.  I work in an Air Nat'l Guard ASOS (Air Support Operations Squadron).  Our wing's flying squadron (F-16s) would rather be playing fighter pilot than doing ground attack missions with us.  The A-10s out of Baltimore, OTOH, love working with us.

[sandiego89]

If looking at the nuclear warfare doctrine of the time of the jets you mention (late 1940's to say the 1970's) there was strategic nuclear delivery and tactical nuclear delivery.  Strategic used the nuclear triad of heavy bombers, ICBM's and SSBN's.  Tactical used all sort of gear- jets, rockets, missiles, cannon, etc- everything from the Davy Crocket to the F-105.  So looking at the tactical role in the orginal post, perhaps single engine jets were all that was really needed?  Perhaps the USAF did not really need a medium bomber for this, when tactical jets could deliver a single tactical nuclear weapon to anywhere on the likely battle ground.  The main warplan was the defense of Europe, and literally thousands of aircraft (US and NATO) were equipped for nuclear delivery.  The target ranges would have been measured in hundreds of miles at most, so tactical, single engine, jets fit this role well. 

Perhaps this is part of the reason for not much emphasis on a medium bomber like we had in WWII.

Besides the B-57 you mentioned the USAF did operate the B-66 and the F-111, which were both clearly not fighters, but in the twin engined medium category.       

[Old Wombat]

Cost & availability are not to be ignored, either.

Using just one WW2 example; the Mosquito. It started out as a bomber, then tactical requirements demanded a fast, multi-engined fighter-bomber & the Mosquito was modified to fulfil that role, then a dedicated fast, long-range, multi-engine nightfighter was required &, again, the Mosquito was modified to fill the role. It was faster & cheaper to take this design & modify it than it was to design an entirely new single-purpose airframe.

This is what has happened to numerous post-WW2 aircraft, as well. It's not so much about fighters which were "inadequate" but which were available & had the ability to be modified to undertake the role, which is cheaper & faster than designing a purpose-built aircraft - in the transition period, at least. Older aircraft were used in the case of tactical nuke delivery because it was considered that the cost of new aircraft was prohibitively expensive to be converting them into, essentially, one-mission expendables.



Guy

[KJ_Lesnick]

Dizzyfugu

IMHO, there was no real "plan" behind the equipment development between USN an USAF.

As I understand it the USAF didn't value dive bombers like the USN and USMC did and that played a big role in things.  

The USAAS/C/F valued CAS least and didn't like attack-planes because they were slower than the fighters (plus they felt a properly designed fighter could do both missions), they seemed more interested in glide-bombing and at least some attack planes had internal bays; eventually they started favoring twin-engined attack planes which were faster and that lead to the XA-14/A-14, then the A-18, and of course the legendary A-20 and A-26 as well as the B-25.  Though the USAAF did procure variants of the SBD (A-24) and SB2C (A-25) -- I'm unsure how much each was used.

For fighters, there was several schools of thought regarding them though speed, climb-rate, agility were all important but some schools of thought emphasized intermediate altitude operations for supporting or engaging in tactical missions, interception of enemy of bombers using intermediate or high-altitude capability, and intermediate/high altitude bomber-escort (some did see an inherent use in them, but didn't think it was either physically or economically do-able, especially with their unwillingness to use drop-tanks).  As a result you saw pretty straight forward fighter designs throughout the interwar era as well as some oddball designs such as the Berliner Joyce P-16, the Lockheed YP-24 and Consolidated Y1P-25/P-30 which had two crew so as to provide a defensive gunner (the idea was either to penetrate a wagon-wheel formation, or for bomber defense concepts), as well as the FM-1 Airacuda which was a twin-engined multi-crewed bomber destroyer -- neither of which were successful.  

The USAAC had various "factions" with different ideas and the tactical guys wanted greater range so they could perform diving attacks on the enemy's rear, some wanted more high-altitude capability and firepower; some of these types wanted fighter-bomber type designs with greater loads than the 500 pound maximum requirement and these ideas ultimately coalesced into the P-38 (which was classified as an interceptor to bypass the requirements on bomb-load, altitude-performance, and engine limit) which had excellent high-speed, fast-climbing capability, longer range than most fighters, a cannon in addition to the traditional gun armament and a bomb-load that would eventually reach around 2,000 pounds.  There were of course other fighters built at the time such as the P-39, P-40, P-47, and eventually the P-51.  The P-40 was basically a P-36 with an inline engine that was eventually modified further (and then armored to the hilt which jacked up it's weight); The P-39 was a really creative design with a nose-gear, an engine behind the cockpit with a shaft running underneath the pilots legs with a cannon fired out the hub; the P-47 was based on the Seversky P-35, the P-43 and P-44; the P-51 was based loosely on the P-40 and XP-46 with a belly-mounted radiator and new laminar flow wings (essentially a "Super P-40").

Despite the bigger attack planes like the A-20; the USAAF did procure an interesting design called the A-36 which was essentially a modified P-51 with a redesigned radiator and speed-brakes.  It was actually created due to fiscal-year funding issues, though it had a top-speed of 360 mph and with speed and agility needed no defensive armament like most attack planes did. (Contrary to what the USAAF top brass felt, it's brakes weren't useless and were actually quite effective) -- despite it's positive reviews, it seemed to be replaced by other aircraft such as the P-47 (which admittedly carried a heavier load).  Eventually the USAAF had actually proposed a single-engined attack plane more like the USN's BT2D/AD/A-1 Skyraider which was based around the idea of combining dive & torpedo bombing into one role and removing defensive armament to save weight (and drag) called the XA-41: It had a single crew, an internal bomb-bay which could carry up to 3,200 pounds of bombs or a torpedo, external capacity for 3,200 pounds.  With a top speed of 363 mph it was slower than the early A-20's and A-26's and definitely slower than the P-47, but it could actually turn inside a P-51B and haul even more whoopass than the P-47 could.  The USAAF stupidly ditched the design favoring either bigger planes like the A-26 or the smaller P-47.  The US Navy did take a look at it along with the XBT2D, XBTM, XBTC, XBTK designs of theirs -- they ultimately chose the AD and AM however.

This arrangement gave the USN a greater sizing between fighter/fighter-bomber, and twin-engine medium bomber (technically the A-26 was a light-bomber, but in some Air Forces it would be a medium).  This is where much of the differences came.

I think that many aircraft were "pushed" into new roles as the conflict theatre changed.

The night-fighters of WW2 such as the P-61 ended up being some of the first post-war all-weather interceptors; the P-82/F-82 was originally an ultra long-ranged fighter designed to escort B-29's distances in excess of 4,000 miles, though it was used as an all weather interceptor for air-defense (as well as serving as fighters in Korea); the first jet-fighters were pretty much always designed as fighter-interceptors as they were fast and had good climb-rates and were used that way post-war, but without a radar their use at night was very limited requiring the older piston designs to do the trick.  That being said one of the first USAF's dedicated night-fighters (F-89) ended up being used as an all-weather interceptor; an F-80 and F-86 derivative ended up being turned into all weather interceptors (F-94 and F-86D) and eventually were all modified to the point that they all no longer had guns and the F-94C had redesigned wings to allow for higher speeds (and with afterburners were supersonic in level flight)

The F-84 was originally designed as a jet-powered P-47 with centrifugal flow engine but it wouldn't fit in the P-47's fuselage as is so they eventually redesigned the whole thing and by this point it was a pure fighter-interceptor: It had all sorts of handling problems, structural failures, and an inability to meet all it's performance goals and there was serious issue of canceling it (I think they should have; that or reclassified it as a light-bomber so real fighters could be used where it mattered).  While it had a good range, it really only had two functions -- tactical bombing and escort missions because it had long range though the USAF had looked into jet-powered penetration fighter designs of all sorts...

• XP-81: Developed as a hybrid design with a turboprop and a turbojet.  The idea was that it could cruise with the bombers, and dash and maneuver with the fighters as needed (Cancelled)
  
• XP-83: Basically it was a streamlined and bloated P-59 like design.  It had good range and was faster than the P-59 which sucked, it wasn't as fast as the P-80 or F-86 though; it had trouble with fuel slosh and it ultimately got axed.
  
• XP-85: Designed as a parasite fighter to be carried a B-35's bomb-bay and looked like a football with a triple tail-fin and folding wings.  It was difficult to dock under certain conditions and slow engine response didn't help.  There were also people who detested the idea of escort fighters (deja vu all over again)
  
• F-88: Part of the penetration fighter family; they basically wanted a jet-era P-51.  It was capable of high subsonic speed, supersonic speed in a dive, and long-range, but it's altitude could have been better and they felt the B-47's could go it alone (of course that didn't say anything for all the B-29's and B-50's online).
  

...it cancelled all of them for one reason or another (The F-86 eventually took over escorts, though for some long-range flights the F-84's were the first fighters fitted with aerial refueling capability so were still used sometimes when daytime operations came into play).  As for tactical bombing, it did turn out to be a good mud-mover.

After WWII, high altitude, subsonic bombers were the way to go.

After?  During the lead-up to WW2, WW2 and post WW2 the idea was to fly higher, faster, or at least high enough and fast enough to make intercept as difficult as possible.  The attitude was basically "the bomber will always get through". Fighters were simply faster than the bombers generally, they miscalculated the speed margins you'd need for good intercepts.  Radar also greatly helped things out (especially when you had fighters equipped with radar -- admittedly they were mostly medium bombers but regardless).

There were a few bombers that had a high probability of getting through on speed, altitude, and agility without escort.  The A-20 and A-26 also had defensive armament, and the DH.98 did it just with speed and agility: Even they took some losses and had P-51's sometimes escorting them around sometimes.  As jets came around the idea of fitting them to bombers came around very early (1943), and the appearance of the German jet-fighters and bomber designs lead to a variety of planes that ultimately included the B-45 and B-47: Both were fast, but the B-47 was faster -- actually able to outrun the F-80 and F-84 at altitude; he F-86 was faster (and flew in the same year).  By 1951, the MiG-15's were online and the USAF had already tested a supersonic fighter (which it cancelled) and the USN was testing two carrier based planes.

A-bombs were huge and heavy, too. On the other side, you needed agile fighters with ever higher speed and climb of rate to intercept them.

Correct, and the F-80's and F-86's were both fast and could climb quick, there was the proposed XF-91 which was supersonic and offered the prospect of speeds potentially around 1.79 mach using rockets and jet-engines: It was cancelled -- after a radar was fitted.  The F-61 and F-82 were used for point defense, and the F-89, F-94, and F-86D eventually combined jet-power with all-weather capability.

When nukes got smaller they became fitted to bombers (B-45, B-57) of smaller size, but also to fighters.  That wasn't intrinsically a problem in and of itself because jets were often faster than planes like the AD, and the abortive XA-41; the problem was that the crappy fighters ended up being relegated to nuclear-bombing roles which went from necessity to tradition and before you know it the F-105 was built around this -- had it been built as a fighter, it would have been a hell of a lot better...


Mr. Creak

It's quite simple - though not necessarily logical ¹.
The USAF, like most air forces, had/ still has an aversion (mostly "cultural" ²) to moving mud for the pongoes ⁴.
The USN, on the other hand, is/ has been about power projection - wrecking stuff on foreign shores (and as far inland as possible ⁵), AFAIK every USN attack type from the Skyraider onwards has been nuclear capable, coupled with a good relationship with the Marines (i.e. they know the value of CAS/ BAI, which could lend "credulity" to tactical ops).
There's also probably a touch of "nukes are strategic" and if a tactical aircraft can carry a nuke then Congress won't fund our big shiny prestigious strategic bomber force.

1 Unless you subscribe to varying values of "logical".
2 It's not our job - we fight in the sky! ³
3 OTOH the Army shouldn't be allowed to have fixed-wing aircraft because flying them is our job.
4 Which is why most new designs since WWII specified, either explicitly or implicitly, "not a pound for air to ground".
5 Why do we need an air force? - we can reach as far inland as they can.

1.) Well one person can say that it depends on what your goal is.  Of course your goals can be misguided, impractical, overly complicated, etc.

2.) Many of the independent air-forces were based largely on strategic bombing, which ranged from practical, to far-fetched, to war-crimes

• Practical: Knock out air-fields, railway yards, docks, and harbors, oil-fields and oil-storage facilities, aircraft factories
  
• Far Fetched: Penetrating enemy territory without fighter escort (admittedly there was some interest in such fighters; merely the belief it couldn't be done economically) unless you have some seriously fast and high flying bombers is a recipe for disaster (the RAF lost more guys than the Army and Navy did)
  
• War Crimes: Deliberate targeting of civilians.  This trails back to Douhet, Trenchard, and Mitchell.  Seemingly every major power did it from the Germans, the British and United States, the Italians and Japanese in the lead up to and during WW2
  

.
Tactical missions were secondary to strategic (despite the fact that, other than airfields, most all other targets were non-military in nature).  Generally wars are won by killing enemy forces by the thousands (or millions) until they either can no longer fight, or they surrender (which often results in huge casualties).  That's how WW2 was won in Europe despite all the cities that got burned to rubble (Japan, however was won by nuclear bombardment -- something strategic bombing proponents use to vindicate themselves, regardless, the allied track record was 50%, a score that would get me an F -- they were still occupied).  Boots on the ground are going to be used unless you bomb them back to the stone age (in fact early nuclear war proposals called for occupation anyway -- feel sorry for all those guys who's lives would be cut short by being irradiated beyond belief) unless an armistice is hatched.

3.) The US Army actually had fixed-wing airplanes including observation, and transports for tactical airlift: They were not supposed to have fixed-wing combat aircraft after the USAF was pinched off from the Army.
- They started to arm their helos and procure fixed-wing combat planes for CAS missions because the USAF was doing such a bad job at CAS
- They procured four engined transports largely because they were not explicitly told they couldn't
...the USAF fought it tooth and nail simply because they felt fixed wing combat airplanes were their domain (and they were sort of right), unfortunately they didn't want to use the A4D-2, the Fiat G-91, or the N-156F (though they later got that one).

4.) As for Not a Pound for Air to Ground being the mantra post WW2: That's absolutely nonsense

• The F-80 was originally built as an interceptor: It eventually included provision for 2,000 pounds of bombs
  
• The F-84 was originally an interceptor, but eventually had the ability to carry 4,000 pounds of bombs; the F-84F Thunderstreaks could carry up to 6,000 pounds
  
• The F-86 was designed as a fighter-interceptor, but also a fighter-bomber and a bomber-escort (the latter didn't work out too good for long range flights): It could carry up to 5,300 pounds of bombs
  
• The F-89D could carry 3,200 pounds of bombs
  
• The F-100A could carry 4,000 pounds of bombs; the F-100D could carry 7,040 pounds
  
• The F-101A was to include a pod like the B-58 did which could haul fuel and a nuclear bomb: The whole assembly weighed around 10,000 pounds
  
• The F-104 far as I know had no bomb-load from the start; the -C could carry 4,000 pounds; the -S could carry more than that max
  
• The F-105 could carry up to 15,000+ technically; operationally it's maximum loads were around 14,000; When one considers that the 900 gallon external load was almost 6,000 pounds: Max load was around 8,000 to 9,000 pounds (8,000 could be carried in the internal bay which was almost never used; the bay typically carried a 390 gallon tank; 12 x 750 pound bombs could be carried)
  
• The F-4 Phantom, though a Navy design, could carry a physical maximum load of 22,000-22,500 pounds (this wasn't done because if I recall right the bombs might scrape the ground), operational loads could be as high as 16,000 with later models possibly going around 18,000 pounds
  

.
Not a pound for Air to Ground became more popular in the 1960's.

5.) Technically you could argue that all air-power is an extension of land and sea-based power.  Most USAF types don't want to think about that, but you can analyze it yourself and you'll see exactly what I mean
- Close Air Support is a logical use of air-power to protect ground-forces
- Air Defense can be used as a logical application of land or sea based air-power to protect a ship, or a country
- Tactical missions can be argued as an extension of sea and land projected air-power to destroy both sea and land-based targets in the area of battle or leading up to it
- Strategic bombing is essentially the application of sea and/or land-power to destroy targets integral to a war-effort.

[rickshaw]

- Close Air Support is a logical use of air-power to protect ground-forces

The role of Close Air Support is to provide "aerial artillery" to support ground forces both in the offensive and the defensive.  It is to enable ground forces to "take and hold ground".   You're ignoring the first solely in favour of the second in the belief it is purely a defensive tactical use.

The other tactical role of aerial fire power is to interdict the battlefield to prevent the enemy from moving forces and supplies to and from the battlefield and across it.

[Mr.Creak]

4.) As for Not a Pound for Air to Ground being the mantra post WW2: That's absolutely nonsense

I did write Which is why most new designs since WWII specified, either explicitly or implicitly, "not a pound for air to ground".
It was an attitude, not a policy.
And it applied to individual aircraft types - not every single one i.e. those that were wanted for air-air were massively optimised for that role with mud moving very much as a "if it'll fit then do it, if it's going to be hard work, don't".

(the RAF lost more guys than the Army and Navy did)

What?
John Terraine, The Right of the Line:
'From first to last, 1939-45, the Royal Air Force lost 70,253 officers, NCOs and airmen killed or missing on operations'
UK military losses 0.37 million (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/64/WW2.gif).
That means ~300,000 losses other than RAF. I wonder which arms of service they happened to.

[KJ_Lesnick]

rickshaw

I'm sorry, I should have been more careful in my definitions


Mr.Creak

I did write Which is why most new designs since WWII specified, either explicitly or implicitly, "not a pound for air to ground".
It was an attitude, not a policy.

And you'd still be wrong...

i.e. those that were wanted for air-air were massively optimised for that role with mud moving very much as a "if it'll fit then do it, if it's going to be hard work, don't".

If you mean the F-102 and F-106, then yes; however many designs had air to ground capability

WW2 Conceived Jet-Designs

• P-80/F-80 Shooting Star (Fighter-Interceptor): Initially had no bombs, was added later
  
• XP-81 (Escort-Fighter): 2,000 lbs of bombs
  
• XP-83 (Long-Ranged Fighter/Escort-Fighter Concept): No bomb-load
  
• P-84/F-84 Thunderjet (Fighter-Interceptor): No bomb-load initially (was, however proposed as a jet-powered P-47 which did have a bomb-load)
  
• XP-85/XF-85 Goblin (Escort-Fighter): No bomb-load
  

.
Post WW2 to Korean War Designs

• P-86/F-86 Sabre (Fighter-Bomber/Air-Superiority Fighter): First production model could carry 2 x 1,000 lbs of bombs
  
• XF-88 Voodoo (Penetration Fighter): Didn't appear to carry any in prototype form; specifications called for it if necessary (never entered service)
  
• XF-90 (Penetration Fighter): 2,000 lbs of bombs (never entered service)
  
• XF-91 Thunderceptor (Interceptor): No bomb-load (never entered service)
  
• YF-93 (Penetration Fighter): Specifications called for it if necessary; unsure if it carried any in flight-tests (never entered service)
  
• F-94 (All-Weather Fighter-Interceptor): 2,000 lbs of bombs
  
• F-86D (All-Weather Interceptor): Originally designated F-95; no bomb-load evidently
  

.
Post Korea to End of Vietnam War

• F-100 Super-Sabre (Fighter): 4,000 lbs of bombs initially
  
• F-101 Voodoo (Escort Fighter): Evidently no bomb-load initially
  
• F-102 Delta Dagger (All-Weather Interceptor): No bomb-load
  
• F-104 Starfighter (Fighter-Interceptor): No bomb-load initially
  
• F-106 Delta Dart (All-Weather Interceptor): No bomb-load
  
• F-4 Phantom (Fighter-Interceptor/Fighter-Bomber): 16,750 lbs of bombs (IIRC operationally)
  

[Mr.Creak]

And you'd still be wrong...

Really?

If you mean the F-102 and F-106, then yes; however many designs had air to ground capability

I think you missed my point: how much was the design of, say, the F-86 compromised (if at all) to give the capability - which wasn't used for a good while - to carry bombs?

WW2 Conceived Jet-Designs

I DID state post-WWII.

As for the others I'll ask one question: how long was it after being accepted for service that those air-air types that were capable of doing so were ACTUALLY fitted with air-ground weapons?

[KJ_Lesnick]

Mr. Creak

Really?

I thought I deleted that comment -- it did sound awfully arrogant 

I think you missed my point: how much was the design of, say, the F-86 compromised (if at all) to give the capability - which wasn't used for a good while - to carry bombs?

Unsure, but that seems more an example of good design discipline.  The F-86 was first and foremost a fighter-interceptor (all jets were in those days); then a bomber.  It was designed that way as a result.

The F-105 for example was designed first and foremost a low-n-fast strike aircraft.

I DID state post-WWII.

However many fighters we think of as post-WW2 were conceptualized during WW2.  I was trying to give you a trend-analysis.

As for the others I'll ask one question: how long was it after being accepted for service that those air-air types that were capable of doing so were ACTUALLY fitted with air-ground weapons?

I don't know...

[Mr.Creak]

I thought I deleted that comment -- it did sound awfully arrogant 

Unsure, but that seems more an example of good design discipline.  The F-86 was first and foremost a fighter-interceptor (all jets were in those days); then a bomber.  It was designed that way as a result.

But, if carrying bombs had had an impact on the primary mission they'd have been left out. A hard point doesn't impact the design tremendously. And, in fact later versions of the F-86  reduced, or eliminated that capability:
F-86H 1,200lb ¹, K - zero, L - zero.

However many fighters we think of as post-WW2 were conceptualized during WW2.  I was trying to give you a trend-analysis.

Ah, got it.

I don't know...

It wasn't until the closing stages of Korea that F-86s were assigned to ground attack. Up until then it had been a case of "any old type will do that job".

1 Weirdly FAS (http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/usa/airdef/f-86.htm) states that the F-86 was redesigned as a fighter bomber in the F-86H!