P-38 Lightning : Advice & Tips

[PapaH]

Originally posted by Dux:

My favorite story of his is "Night Flight".[/QB]

I learned about St. Ex in a book of flying stories by Richard Bach...the story was about getting to know dead flyers by reading what they wrote.

Went straight out and bought the book "Airman's Odyssey", which is three stories by the man himself. it contains 'Nightflight', 'Wind Sand & Stars', and 'Flight to Arras'.  

Wind Sand and Stars is the experience that led him to write 'The Little Prince' that we all grew up reading.  Flight to Arras was written about recon flight just before the fall of France.

He was, to my mind, the one writer who changed early pilots from truck drivers to artists...he was the poet pilot. A thoughtful tractor operator.  A reflective factory worker.  Hard to imagine flying without art now...but in his time it was a rare thing.

"There would be nothing to say to-morrow.  To-morrow, in the eyes of the bystanders, we would be the defeated.  The defeated have no right to speak.  No more right to speak than has the seed."

Antoine De Saint-Exupery
Flight to Arras, 1940

Thanks for reminding me to read this one again!

8=X Col PapaH
Cutthroats Mercenary Company
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[PapaH]

Rust...what a great post!

Thank you for sharing it with us.


PapaH
Cutthroats Mercenary Company

[Lephturn]

I noticed that up the thread aways Kingonads wrote:  

 

I was at around 25K when I happened appon a Seafire 10K below me. I began a gental turn to get me on his high six then began a shallow dive on it... this is where it gets sad The spit took evasive actions I turned once with him with flaps at 1 notch then climbed away I retracted flaps and lined up again. Then when I came down again the spit just started to out run me in a dive, now I know and U know a Seafire can not out dive any P38 I was doing about 350 IAS and accelerating and he just kept out running me I climbed away and let him go. But he out ran me in level flight too. I may have not managed the E properly but I doubt it I let him go because it pissed me off so bad I didnt see a point in it.

Do you know what fighter had the highest critical mach of all prop fighters in WWII?  Yes, the Spit.  It did not suffer from compression as badly as the P-38, which was possibly the worst in this regard.  That said, I don't know why you expect to out-dive a Spit.  The spit will out-dive the 38 every time... it will accellerate well in a dive and retain control at higher speeds than the 38 will.  The 38 might gain on it in the middle part of the dive before compression sets in, but if the Spit has enough alt he's gone and you won't stay with him in a dive.  You shouldn't expect to.  If you want to catch spits in a dive bring a Jug or a 51.