Well, once again, in Russa it did well, in Afriica (which I beleave it was used in limited numbers) it did horrably, agains the japs the P-400 (a british P-39D given on lend-lease taken back by the US) was known as "The P-40 with a 0 (zero) on it's tail." The plane was almost a joke against the japs.
In fighter combat the engine was often the first thing to go do to most fighter shots being from the tail. Do to this though crew servivabliaty was very high, the engine took the damage, not the pilot. In the ETO it's kill to lose was 1 to 3!!! It did horrably! But in ground attack it was outstanding.
But on the eastern front at frist from what I've read it started out horrably do to balance problems, the CG was to far back, the aircraft would often fall into a very deadly flat spin, so tight flat and vertical turns were limited.
But the Russians figured that out fast, they removed the .30 cals from the wings, they'ed removed some pilot armor and often fuel tanks aswell! Thats when it really started to show it's true colors! And if you read into it the Russians didn't even use the P-39 for ground or AT attack, though other countries found it useful in this role (Read into the development of the game Il-2 they talk all about it from the russian pilots they used to test the game) the Russians found it to be a great fighter below 10k, but only on the russian front did you find such low alt fighting on a normal bases.
So the plane was crap with the way it entered service, but once touched up like all combat aircraft of ww2 it became a good fighter, but only in the hands of russians. To the US on the other hand it wasn't worth there time, it flew in africa and italy, but were almost only used for ground attack. (I've have one of those walk around books on the history on the P-39)
The US had other, better aircraft already in service, so upgrades to the P-39 were limited.
HAH! I found my book on fighter sorties in the ETO! (wow it's worse then I thought)
ETO 1942-45:
P-39:
Number of Sorties: 30,547
Bomb Tonnage: 121
Aircraft lose in combat: 107
Enemy aircraft destroyed in air: 14
Enemy A/C destoryed on ground: 18
So thats roughly a 1-9 kill ratio, every 9 P-39's shot down they would destroy an aircraft in the air and an aircraft on the ground.
Yet as said before in the hands of the russians it was outstanding. Mmm, I love stats.
But the whole point I was trying to make in the first place was, what if the P-39 was built to specs!!! The way the Yp-39 was, it could have been the best fighter at the start of the war, it might have even been the US's Me-109! Who knows, I was just saying, I would have liked to have seen that.
And on that subject, theres a game called Targetware, I'm thinking of making a prototype or "what if" mod for it. I think that would be great, all the aircraft that other games won't add, we could just make them our selves! Anyone interested?
Edward
