This is a common mistake.The P-38L model have Dive Brakes not Flaps. This will help you get out of a compression by making air flow over the elevators again giving you the abilaty to pull up. So they aren't flaps but they will make you turn a little better than you normaly would.
Well, there are three common mistakes that I see in both of the previous posts.
First, the P-38L has dive
flaps and not dive brakes. Second, the flaps did not act as a speed brake, they affected the center of pressure distribution so that the wing would not lose its lift. However, because of the positive nose pitch it would bleed energy from the P-38. There are numerous stories from P-38 pilots using the dive flaps to aid in high speed turns. They'd deploy the flaps at the start of the turn and then immediately retract them as soon as the turn was finished, otherwise because of the nose up pitch the P-38 would bleed energy quickly. Third, the only time the dive flaps would aid in turning is at high speed and would be useless under 300mph IAS.
The dive flaps do work in the P-38L in Aces High as long as you are not using Combat Trim and are properly trimmed. In fact of any flight sim that has a P-38L modeled that I've played, AH is the only one that has it modeled correctly.
The way the P-38L dive flaps are modeled in IL2 is not historically correct. From what I've gathered from playing it is the energy loss stems from the flaps being deployed themselves and not the energy loss as a result of the sudden nose up pitch.
ack-ack
