How would the P-38 have performed...

[Angus]

Well, both actually.
And some even owned P51's

[AquaShrimp]

There are many pilots who regularly post here.  We have

1 actual F-15 pilot.
Two commercial pilots
Several flying crewmembers of military aircraft.
Many people who have private pilot licenses.
Those who have flown but don't have PPLs.
Then we have individuals who are expert historians on certain types of aircraft.  

But in all seriousness, we'll stop razzing ya.  I'd love to hear more about your Mustang and the dogfights you were in.  So please, continue...

[Westy]

"...I assume that this is not a forum of Pilots but wannabes......"

lol.    "Glass house" and all that.


Er but  I once knew this guy who, along with his dad,  owned a  bon_A_fide B-17 named the "Lazy Susan."

[AquaShrimp]

Would he really type out those very long and detailed replies though?  That seems above and beyond for trolling.

[Westy]

Search for the user ID "Straiga" and you'll soon see that some trolls will post a wall of text to hoodwink people.  For some of them( ex/Straiga, Voss and another named Ken Strohm)  it is how they get thier kicks or fill some defective mental need.

[AquaShrimp]

I don't consider what Straiga/Voss did trolling.  If someone pretended to be Straiga/Voss, that would be trolling.  But S/V were doing something more sinister and decietfull than trolling.

[Widewing]

Originally posted by paladinsfo
Gentlemen..
I am new here....so if I make some errors...I apologize....and I am not especially literate with this machine....
a question was posed about re-engining a P-38 with the P-51 engine...it didn't need more power, it needed more reliable power. A p-38 regularly broke the sound barrier in a dive, several test pilots died before they discovered control reversal after breaking the barrier...another problem was the fabric control surfaces, because of the assymetrical wing the control surfaces would develop flutter under certain conditions and in a matter of seconds the vibration would damage or completely destroy the device.
Several P-51 B models were reworked as F6 models....I purchased a B model with the Malcolm hood that was shipped to Australia as a photo recon ship...it was never used, and when I purchased it it had logged 43.5 hours on the hobbs meter. I shipped it to the Philippines where I owned an aviation electronics establishment and started rework. At that time the Philippine air force was converting from P-51's to F-86 and F100 jets from the U.S. Air National Guard, whom was updating their equipment.
My bird was never equipped with pylons, weapons, armor etc..the only armor was in the cockpit area...The camera was behind the pilot and weighed in nearly 450 pounds, the old ARC radio units were also power hogs and added another 230 pounds as they were powered by dynamotors...all of that went...we moved a battery and extended fuel tank aft for weight and balance....From the Philippine air force I purchased 2 each crated packard engines rated at 2100 horsepower...my plane was 2200 pounds lighter than a combat version with 30% more power....for sunday afternoon fun and giggles we would dogfight with the P.A.F sabres...I won most of the time.....could turn a lot faster, shorter and outclimb them if they spooled down.....
Some additional info on the Flying Tigers P-40......When the order came in from China for the planes, Curtiss was working to capacity...but greedy for the bucks they wanted the contract....They very carefully read the contract and accepted it with no changes. In their inexperience the Chinese had not required external armament pylons on the planes.....nor additional armor....no self sealing fuel tanks etc....
Curtis-Wright contacted their warehouse manager to get some reject engine parts inventoried...parts that were out of spec for production engines...they carefull miked each part out and placed them in carefully marked bins.....they used hand fitted cranks etc, and extremely tight tolerance parts..resulting in the first "Blueprinted" engines....when the engines were installed and test flown the Curtiss test pilots never pushed the engines hard because they wanted a deliverable and didn't want a destroyed engine......When Chennault got the planes they were several hundred pounds lighter than those going to the U.S./Turkey/U.K and the tight tolerance engines resulted in horsepower that was 4-500 horsepower more than the stock engine......look at the combat record with the zero-sen fighter over china...amazing....

Capt Chuck Phillips
Former S.E.Asia pilot
Air America, Lao Air, Angola
China Post 1

Amusing, but riddled with errors.

Curtiss did not build engines for P-40s... Allison did.

AVG Tomahawks DID have self sealing fuel tanks, but their sealing was external rather than internal (per P-40B Vs P-40C).

No Zeros were ever encountered by the Flying Tigers. They fought exclusively against the JAAF. Many AVG pilots referred to the Ki-43 as a Zero, not knowing any better at the time.

I think the Fabric control surfaces and Mach busting has been previously addressed.

My regards,

Widewing

[BGBMAW]

SHANANAGINS!!!

1950s...1970s...1990's...2000's..amazing life..should write a book and a video game based on your life

[Wolfala]

Originally posted by paladinsfo
sorry to burst your bubble...I was a civilian and in Iraq for other reasons the week before he went into Kuwait.......
The  reports that I read on the P-38 were written in english and had the heading of the Lockheed test facility...I read them in the mid 1950's.....
and from the remarks I assume that this is not a forum of Pilots but wannabes......

OOoo...we've got at least a dozen guys here who have been to Iraq and showed us their pictures.

Show and tell time!

Lets see ur 51, with Reg #'s in the clear.

[Debonair]

Originally posted by Widewing
...No Zeros were ever encountered by the Flying Tigers. They fought exclusively against the JAAF. Many AVG pilots referred to the Ki-43 as a Zero, not knowing any better at the time....

It had surprised me that this still goes on.
I have a book by a Hurricane pilot who was at Singapore & in the photos section there is a picture of a Ki.43 labeled "zero" & I thought, "WoW, this guy, a pro, an actual WWII fighter pilot & all these years later he still doesn't know what he was fighter", but I got On Boyington's Wing a month ago & read in it that at the time "zero" meant "any jap fighter" and "zeke" meant specificly an A6m.
To use McLurg's example "I saw two zeros, and they were tonys" is a perfectly logical sentence.
This is backed up in a lot of the VMF 214 combat reports than are quoted in the book & also suggests that AVG pilots claiming to have encountered "zeros" is not a mistake

[Widewing]

Originally posted by Debonair

This is backed up in a lot of the VMF 214 combat reports than are quoted in the book & also suggests that AVG pilots claiming to have encountered "zeros" is not a mistake

When the AVG first went into combat, there was no naming system in place yet (Zeke, Oscar, Tony and so on). Moreover, they flew for the Nationalist Chinese. Previously, the IJN had deployed early Zeros to China to obtain some combat experience with the type. Chennault had examined one of these A6Ms that had crash landed due to mechanical problems. He discussed the Zero and its performance with the AVG during their training in 1941. The primary Japanese fighter encountered during the first weeks of the war was the Ki-27 (Nate). This fighter had fixed landing gear. Few Ki-43s were in theater, but when it was encountered it met the general description of the Zero; radial engine, retractable gear, etc.

AVG pilots simply referred to the Ki-43 as the "Zero". They referred to the Ki-27 as the Type 97 in combat reports.

Even though Chennault identified downed Ki-43s for what they were, the AVG pilots continued to call them "Zeros" out of habit. This carried over to some of the pilot's post-war writings.

My regards,

Widewing

[HoHun]

Hi Debonair,

>I have a book by a Hurricane pilot who was at Singapore & in the photos section there is a picture of a Ki.43 labeled "zero"

I found a similar example in "Hurricane over Sumatra", where from post-war analysis it's clear that the RAF Hurricanes there fought against Ki-43 units - and they refer to the Ki-43 as "Navy Nought" :-)

With regard to the Flying Tigers, it had occurred to me that it might be possible to check the combat reports to see if cannon damage was sustained by any of the AVG aircraft, because only the A6M was cannon-armed. However, a few days ago I found a remark that showed that 12.7 mm high explosive projectiles were mistaken for cannon shells in one example, and as the Ki-43 carried 12.7 mm guns (or 12.7 mm one gun) and the Japanese employed HE ammunition, there went my infallible proof :-/

(I think I have also read about "fixed gear Zeros", by the way - which supports your point about any Japanese fighter being called "Zero" :-)

Regards,

Henning (HoHun)

[Pooh21]

Originally posted by paladinsfo

I assume that this is not a forum of Pilots but wannabes......

you come to a site for a game with cartoon airplanes and are shocked to find wannabes?

[gripen]

Originally posted by Captain Virgil Hilts
Turns out a big part of the problem with the P-38 was how the flashing and such around the side windows fit up. Proper fit up would result in big gains in how the plane handled and when it entered "mach tuck".

Hm... The fitting of the windows or the wing fillet might have a effect on onset of the buffeting but overall the loss of the lift (resulting the tuck under) in the center wing section happens at well over 2m wide area so the windows or the fillets can't have any large effect on tuck under.

The critical mach number of the standard P-38 for the pitching moment changes was roughly mach 0,68 at 1g in pretty much all tests done in flight or wind tunnel. That includes several tests made by Lockheed, NACA and RAE using several different airframes and several different wind tunnels. The only exception being the "Swordfish" P-38 which was modified according to NACA suggestions and reached around mach 0,7 when the tuck under started.

For further information see here and here.

gripen

[Angus]

GREAT LINKS Gripen!!!!

This one had me pondering :
"Gilruth based his small-model wing-flow technique on the physical fact that air above the wing of a high-speed airplane, like the P-51 Mustang, went quite smoothly and uniformly through the speed of sound. "

I've heard about a P51 pilot claiming exactly this, - that they mached with the control surfaces. (They'd vibrate, freeze up, then unlock at a higher speed). Will take me some time to read up a little more, but me lucky bastige just got an au-pair girl to the household who is about to graduate as an aeronautical engineer (aerodynamics, hehe )
She's already had her eyes grow bigger from that file