Been asking questions about stalls. bozon once told me;
"Once normal airflow is lost over the wings, anything can happen."
I understand that as 'there's no such thing as an aircraft that is safe from stalls' - especially, when it enters a violent stage.
We assume the P-38 to be a gentle, forgiving plane in that it has no torque - which, is usually what pulls a plane into a violent spin as it meets a stall.
However, if for any reason airflow is disrupted while the P-38 enters a stall, I don't think there's any reason to just assume that the P-38, despite all that, will still be a gentle plane.
Such stalls happen to all aircraft of AH:
* A Spitfire, a forgiving plane with fantastic maneuverability at low speeds and high AoA, will whip into a violent flat spin, which is initiated by the rudder action which spins the plane in its yaw axis 180 degrees and brings the nose over the horizon - when excessive amount of rudder is applied while sudden pull on stick.
* The 190 and 109 have a high tendency of falling into a inverted flat spin when 'whipping the nose down' process during a vertical goes wrong.
* The Ta152 will fall into an almost irrecoverable tail-slide when it goes vertical to 0mph and stays there for too long.
* Even Hurricanes and Zeros, sometimes fall into a nasty situation when the plane meets a stall while the nose is above the horizon.
The problem with most of the above mentioned cases, is typically when massive amount of flap is applied, or when Combat Trim is engaged. Also, it typically happens, when your plane stalls out during a vertical, or when your plane enters a stall during slow maneuvering when nose is above the horizon.
The flaps and/or combat trim, prevent the plane from nosing down naturally and regaining normal airflow with increasing speed. If you look at the speed guage while in such a state, you will notice that your speed hardly exceeds 200mph during a flat spin where you fall out of the sky.
What I've learned is, never, ever use combat trim when going vertical. If you fall into a such stall, the first thing you need to do is bring all trim to neutral, throttle down or turn of engines to reduce torque to minimum, engage rudder to opposite direction of spin, and push the stick to heave the nose down. Sometimes, in a flat spin, aileron input can help, so the plane rolls over to one side, gets out of the flat spin and then enter a normal spin.
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