The Forked Tailed Devil

[Vermillion]

Scissors in a 38???  

Leph I respect you as a pilot, cause I know how good you are. But Scissors in a 38???

The 38 was my ride of choice in WB's, and spent alot of sticktime in one in AW, personally the rolling scissor is the last manuever I would ever want to get into while piloting one.

My experience always was that yes, once you get it rolling it can roll fast, but its initial roll rate was poor, and due to the mass of the engines, its roll reversal rate was even worse. Even the L model with the boosted aelirons.

I wont' argue the fact that it can handle very well at slow speeds and turn very well in a continuous sustained turn in a single direction.

But Scissors in a 38 ???   Tell me I am misunderstanding your post somehow.

A Giant Flying Snail piloted by an half blind arthritic grandmother can beat a P-38  in rolling scissors.  

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Vermillion
**MOL**, Men of Leisure,
"Real Men fly Radials, Nancy Boys fly Spitfires"

[This message has been edited by Vermillion (edited 02-15-2000).]

[funked]

I agree, not a great scissor plane.  The aileron boost only helps you at high speeds.  

However the plane is very stable and stalls nicely, so you can pull back with confidence after each reversal, while a single-engine opponent might flick out.

[Lephturn]

Hehehe.  Ok, I see your point.  I was thinking more of a big barrel roll fight where you roll, but keep going in the same direction.  I seem to get into those a lot, and I have a bad habit of calling that a "rolling scissors".  However, I am basing this on my experience with the old WB P38-J-25LO with the powered aels.  Maybe it shouldn't have been so good, but that sucker could roll, even at low speed.

Anyway, the 38 is not as bad as one would expect in the scissors, rolling or otherwise, due to it's great low-speed handling.  The guy that flies slowest, wins.  In a 38 I can complete a rolling turn at a slower airspeed than almost any other bird out there, and you can win a scissors that way nearly every time... provided you live long enough.

Actually I think the biggest problem is that the 38 is such a HUGE target.  That's the real problem for me in the scissors with the 38.  It's tough to miss that big monster passing in front of you...

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Lephturn
The Flying Pigs
Visit Lephturn's Aerodrome for AH news, resources, and training data.
 http://users.andara.com/~sconrad/

[SC-GManMP]

Juzz, in reference to your wondering why the 20mm projectile drops less, and then dramatically more than the .50 cal:

the .50 cal/U.S. issue, still used today is a 1250 grain, copper jacketed with steel penetrator insert with a muzzle velocity of 2300 fps.
the 20mm U.S. issue, is not the same as today, but had a 1875 grain projectile of the same composition, but at a muzzle velocity screaming around 3600-4000 fps.
With the weight of the projectile and the "drag", this muzzle energy bleeds off quite fast... say 4 tenths of a second, down to roughly 1/3 of its original velocity.

So, believe it or not, the 50 cal has better velocity retention than the 20mm, but is not modeled the same way in the game. Also, i'm not saying that the .50 is more powerful than the 20mm, but i have experience with both weapons and when regarding firing from my humvee at ground targets, i'd prefer to have an m2 than a 20mm any day.(not so when firing at light armored vehicles tho!  

Ground Pounder rule #108:
The bigger the gun, the more fire drawn.

SC-GManMP
U.S. Army Military Police(Active)

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Garrett "SC-GManMP" Pella
Skeleton Crew, "E" Flight

[jimmiet]

Mino bout time some one else asked bout the p-38  its my favrite fighter plane  so im very excited bout the release of the p-38 i cant wait to fly it thanx for all the info on the plane.

[Gator]

Does anybody have data on how many J's with dive-flap mods would have been flying around?

  I have not seen info on numbers of modified Lightnings, but I was looking through my old copy of Martin Caidin's Fork-Tailed Devil: The P-38 where he mentions that Lockheed rushed production of the dive-flap kits and then also relates that "Four hundred and twenty-five sets of the flaps and modification kits were loaded aboard a Douglas C-54 four-engine transport for a high-priority flight to England.  The airplane was shot down by a British pilot flying a Spitfire, and the modification kits vanished beneath the surface of the Atlantic." (p. 55)

[Citabr]

one more reason to hate spitfires

[lemur]

A few cents to throw in:

A 'looping, barrel-roll' fight is, in fact, a rolling scissors.

Are you sure about the weight of the 20mm shells? Some simple math reveals that if the composition of the 20mm were the same they oughta weigh closer to 4500 grains! Some weight taken up by an explosive charge?

And as for the large drop over distance. If you look at that chart, these shells are are only dropping about a foot over 500 yards. Not bad considering how large most of the targets we shoot at are. If anything, it seems like there's a bit too much drop in AH right now.

~Lemur