Could the later model P38 establish complete control of air over Germany without P51

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Hello
IMHO the problem with Spit VIII was that RAF didn't see urgent need to deploy them in ETO, all produced were sent to MTO or to Burma/India/Australia. So the impulse to deploy them in ETO should have come from USAAF, IIRC correctly it was in Summer 43 when USAAF began seriously look for VLR fighters for ETO (historically P-47 with drop tanks, P-38 and P-51B and soon decided that P-51B would be the best solution) so without P-51B and with willingness to use again British fighter in ETO it would have been during late Summer 43 when USAAF would have begun press UK to change a) the way they deployed Spit VIIIs and b) how they split production between Mk VIII and Mk IX, probably also between LF and HF versions. So how long it would have taken to switch production from F/LF IXs to F/HF VIIIs? IMHO probably Spit VIIIs would not have been able to make similar impact on LW fighter force before June 44 as P-51B did historically.

Juha
 
I agree Juha. Simply the production line was set up and in full speed at Inglewood and the Dallas Plant scheduled on line for first releases in fall 1943 IMO, there was no practical way for the Spit VIII to be prioritized and produced in the numbers of the P-51B/C during June 1943.

From perspective the question was 'could it have been effective" and my answer is yes subject to priorites for production, as well as political questions. From the perspective "could the P-38J and particularly the J-25 performed? Yes but even worse problem than Spit VIII posed as the J production priorities would have to be shifted away from MTO and PTO destinations for an 'all in' deployment to the ETO, starting in mid 1943 to establish both the numbers, as well as designate Fighter Groups for either conversion from P-39/P-40 and P-47 then re-directed to ETO - or pull units from MTO and re-direct PTO FG's to 'head east'

As we often say "what couldda happened - Did happen' - the Mustang was in Theatre in time with full production operations behind them.
 
The answer is yes the P-38 could have won n air superiority over the Luftwaffe.

The issue in Northern Europe was the 8th AF put a bunch of single engine pilots with no combat experience into P-38s. There was no time for them to learn both how to fight and fly the P-38 at its best.

Flown by pilots familiar with the 38 this is how a German pilot saw it comment Herbert Kaiser "P-38s could turn inside us with ease and they could go from level flight to a climb almost instantaneously. we lost quite a few pilots because the tried to attack then pulled up,the P-38s were on them at once. They closed so quickly that the that there was little one could do was to roll over and dive, for while the P-38 could turn inside us it rolled very slowly through the first 5 or 10 degrees of bank".

In the Med with pilots familiar with the 38 they were very effective, this is what Johann Stienhoff told Galland " The Luftwaffe no longer has the qualitative nor quantitative advantage . The fact that the Lightning could and would turn up anywhere or anytime was very troubling. Moreover the clear superiority of the Lightning, in both speed and maneuverability, was especially disconcerting".
 From his diary 'Messerschmidt's over Sicily'

Performance was not an issue the Late J and L models had power ailerons that eliminated the slow roll complaints and the dive break that not only allowed steep dives but could raise the nose 15-20 degrees for that tough shot.

The question was production, the second factory did not start until very late 1944 and the first P-38 out of that plant was in 1945!

The P-51s advantage was easy to build, easy to train for, lots of them, low cost and with comparable performance with the enemy. In a war of attrition like WWII it
was was perfect. The availability of the P-51 also allowed the P-38s to go to the Pacific where they were flying missions of 850 mile radius - missions only P-38s could fly.

Bill
 
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P-47D-28 did come close, 835 miles. Achieved by using a 310 gal drop tank under one wing, 165 gal under another, 75 gals belly tank. The quirk was to fight with the belly tank - not the brightest idea vs. German opposition of late 1944, but it was done at the PTO, Oct 1944.
source: America's hundred thousand, pg. 293.
 

Bill - simply, the P-38s could have possibly been a factor pre-D Day in ETO by stripping all 15th AF FG's from the 15th and transferring to 8th - leaving the 15th high and dry over Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia as well as leaving major Ploesti attacks un-escorted during 1st half of 1944.
 
dragondog

The 20th was formed in August 44, the 55th in July 44. According to Ben Kelsy AAF P-38 program officer and Tony LeVier Lockheed test pi.lot these pilots were running their engines at far to high RPM and to low MAP causing low oil temps and high fuel consumption. The low temp caused engine failure when combat power was used because of lubricating issues.

I agree that the required numbers of P-38s were not available prior to D-Day - I mentioned that production was a major issue in my earlier comment.

After the war the AAF did a study which concluded the P-38 was the most effective escort in WWII (I'm sure that only applied to the AAF) Admiral Mischer said the 475th provided the best top cover he ever had over the Philippines. They went on to conclude that size and close escort was primary reasons thy were the best.

The 475th was Never in the ETO.

The P-38 did have issues - so did the P-51

Art Hieden, talked about the blown head gaskets and cracked heads. Another commander groused about a 30% abort rate and called his P-51s experimental! these issues lasted until about the middle of march - about when most of the issues with the P-38s were taken care of.

Of course you are correct about dive and roll issues however when the missions are close escort those don't really matter. J-25s with power ailerons and dive brakes and heat for the pilot were starting to show up about the time the 8th went to free escort but by that time the P-38s prime mission was ground attack in preparation for D-Day.

You are also right that the major fighters were close in performance the "Best Fighter" is largely a matter of opinion. With a good pilot the P-38 was effective from about 30,000ft down and very effective from 20,000ft down with options no single engine fighter had.

My main point is the theoretical question whether the P-38 could win arial superiority over Germany without the P-51 and the answer is if the P-38s production equaled the P-51s yes it could have done the job.

Bill
 
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Tomo

According to the Smithsonian and a couple of other sources the longest mission by a WWII era aircraft was a P-38 mission from Biak to the Dutch East Indies a 2,300mi round trip!

The P-47Ns were getting into the same ball park, if they had been asked to go that distance with proper leaning procedures they could have. They had more internal tankage than the P-47D models and could carry 3 165gal P-38 drop tanks for an estimated 2,600mi predicted flight - the same as the P-38 after Lindbergh. Lindbergh made a great deal of difference in the pacific with F4Us, P-38s and P-47s when it comes to range issues.

Of course the P-38 had the option of 300gal drop tanks too. In 42 Milo Burcham flew 3,000 miles with a P-38F and 165gal drop tanks to prove the long range capability of the P-38.

Bill
 
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Hello wmaxt
according to Olynyk's Stars and Bars 20th FG was activated on Nov 15 1930, 55th Jan 15, 1941 etc. 475th was a great FG, no doubt on thta, but as you wrote it operated in PTO.

Juha
 

But it didn't have the production and it would have required stripping the rest of the theatres to get them
 
Dragondog,

I don't have the source for the study it was an AAF study conducted after the war I picked up the info from a book by Stanaway.

Doolittle wanted a single fighter for several reasons
1. Planing the various aircraft had different flight envelopes that affected mission planning.
2. inventory it was a nightmare to supply 3 totally unrelated aircraft.
3. The P-38 was in demand everywhere for its unique capabilities.
4. The P-51 was available in the numbers he needed and could do the job - the P-51 was almost tailor made for the war over Germany.

The dates I gave for the 55th and the 20th were according to the history of war web site apparently those were the dates they were set up in England.

My point with the problems with the P-51 were just to halite the fact that the P-38 had no more issues that any other fighter in the ETO.

The P-38s in the 55th went operational in the ETO in October I believe right after the second Schwinefurt raid. the 20th sometimes had aircraft flying with the 55th on missions. At that time October/November 1943 the average loss rate of bombers was 9/10% of the total bomber stream 3/4% of the bomber shot down were by AAA. By the middle of November with the 55th escorting the overall loss rate had dropped to 4/5%, this loss rate was never bettered.

One thing to be remembered was that the P-51 outfits were also more experienced with combat as most were operational with other aircraft before they received their Mustangs.

As we both mentioned identifiablity was a major issue with the P-38, Donald Caldwell while researching his book JG-27 interviewed many German pilots about how they felt about the various fighters on the P-38 their comments were that they could choose when or if they wanted to attack. P-51s and P-47s were similar enough that the German aircraft often were committed before they realized the other planes were ours. The miss identification allowed for more kills.

Where did you find the date for the release of the fighters from close escort? I've looked for it for a long time.

As for dives in the P-38 from above 20,000ft the pilot could dive but he MUST close the throttles, go to a flat pitch on the props and if needed roll the plane back and forth - unfortunately few pilots had the experience or will to do this. P-38s made up more than half the long range fighters in the ETO until late April 1944 so the P-38 still had a large part of the winning of aerial superiority over Germany.

One other thing neither the 55th or the 20th did much better with the P-51 in fact one group actually did worse!

In Warren Bodies book P-38 Doolittle comments that the P-38 was "on the balance the P-38 was ahead of all but 1 or 2 of the most outstanding fighters of the war. It was certainly the most versatile. Which is one reason he phased out the P-38s.

Yes a second factory should have been set up in 1942 at the latest which would have also allowed the P-38K to be produced which was a very capable fighter. A second factory would also have allowed dive flaps approved for production in April to be installed on H and J model P-38's.

Bill
 
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And the USAAF could have had the wisdom to buy the P-51, engage with Rolls Royce for license to Packard Merlin and had the P-51B in full combat operations by late 1942, and upgrade to Merlin 61/65/66 etc. - at 1/2 the cost, longer range until the very latest P-38L, faster, nimble and easy to fly.. most would pick the 51 even playing 'what if'
 
Dragondog,

I got the numbers of P-51/P-38s directly from the AAF statistacal digest.

We could go on like this forever on which plane was best and which facts are pertinent. The P-38 was able to win air superiority over German aircraft in the MTO it played a significant part of, and could have won it over Germany. As the situation was at that time with availability of the P-51, and demand elsewhere for the P-38, Doolittle went with the P-51.

The P-51 did a fine job in the ETO it could have been designed for that job, It didn't do as well in the Pacific.

Bill
 
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It did fine in the MTO, becoming primary long range escort fighter for the 15th AF. It did fine even as P-51A in CBI before the P-51B arrived. It did fine in the PTO, just arrived late because it wasn't needed until the B-29s needed them to go to Japan.

No matter how hard it is to accept - the P-38 never completely lived up to the bright future of 1940. It was buggy for years, it was too expensive, it used twice the resources to maintain and fly combat ops. It had a low air to air and air to ground combat record when compared to the P-51 and P-47. It had more accidents in Training command per 1000 sorties.

The RAF didn't want it P-38), but they loved all versions of the P-51 AND HAD THEM IN COMBAT IN THE ETO seven months before the P-38 even though the P-38 flew for the first time 22 months before the first Mustang flight. It took the P-38 almost twice as long from first flight to first combat mission. The P-51 in all versions fought from April 1942 through the end of WWII

When it finally became bug free and capable of performing to expectations the air war on the greatest stage had passed it by. If the P-38L was available in 1942 it would have been great. If it had been available in 1943 it would have been very important, if available in February 1944 it would have been grand. It did pretty well in all respects - just not what it was potentially capable of until mid to late 1944.
 
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Dragondog

The AAF Statistical Digest is on line and details the numbers of aircraft and other supporting data. It shows several things

http://www.usaaf.net/digest/aircraft_and_equipment.htm

1. the P-38 never had the most accidents and was usually near the middle, and in 1945 had the lowest with 78 per 100K while the P-51 had 79 per 100K
2. 2,300 P-38s were sent to the ETO/Mto over the course of the war. There were over 5,000 P-51s sent to the ETO/MTO in what a year and a half. This does not include Allison P-51s
3. Until March 1944 P-38s fought with odds of up to 8/1 with a more experienced adversary
4 in March with P-51s the numbers of US aircraft reached Parity with the Luftwaffe fighter arm never again did US aircraft fly into Germany with less fighter than the Germans had available.
5 In April 44 According to Adolf Galland the German experienced pilot pool was drastically reduced and from that time on US pilots were more experienced
6 in July there were twice as many P-51s in the ETO as German Fighters. Not including aircraft in Italy.

Last the Definition of Air Superiority is the ability of US aircraft to operate in enemy air space sustainably.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_supremacy

By that paraphrased definition P-38s won air superiority in the Med and in the ETO by lowering the loss rate in November 43 in spite of smaller formations and shallower penetrations into German Territory! The warding off of enemy aircraft was effective in allowing operations in enemy territory and that meets the definition of air superiority.

The P-51 extended that to allow bigger formations and deeper penetrations and eventually Arial supremacy a whole different thing. Arial Supremacy is complete dominance of enemy airspace. This was done by sheer numbers.

Highest Score by the P-51 was more from smothering the Germans with more experienced pilots and aircraft than anything else.

P-38s flew and fought under a whole different situation than the P-51 did Including a far higher percentage of ground attack missions. Using just Kills is not a valid comparison. The P-38 was a very effective fighter as attested by its overall record.

Bill
 
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"The P-38 was a very effective fighter as attested by its overall record."Yes it was. But with respect to defeating the Luftwaffe, it was not as effective as the P-51 or the P-47. With respect to defeating Japanese airpower, or close air support, it was not as effective as the F6F
 
Bill - a brief apology. Bovine Fecal matter not such a great response. The vexing issue is that you ignore many facts and present references which often contrdict your points... hence my frustration at re-reading history back to you on the issue of P-51 versus P-38 in the ETO.

I can recommend many sources that I believe would be beneficial.

Kent Miller's Fighter Units and Pilots of the 8th AF is good, getting USAF 85 or accessing USAFHRC website for aerial victory credits is imperative if you want to debate air combat as the USAF defines it. *th AF Victory Credits Board is available on microfilm from HRC and defines ground credits and was basis for final review for USAF Study 85 for 8th AF scores. Frank Olynyk has taken it farther by including USMC and USN.

9th and 15th hard to get but you can extract and match to aircraft flown from USAF 85 and use other references for aircraft deployment (like Olynyk)

You will have to break out deployments and re-training via Miller, Freeman, Maurer per dates of operations, but Olynyk's Stars and bars is an excellent cross reference. Any and all of the Group Histories are useful but Miller's tome on the 8th is a single point of consolidation. Errors - yes but not big ones.

If you are Not drawing from these, you are dealing from 'rumor' and hearsay. Bodie's P-38 or Ethell's P-51, etc etc is NOT a good source for foundation facts on combat achievements at all levels of detail.

Regards,

Bill
 
Drgondog,

You are obviously a P-51 advocate, your bias shows, as does mine. However Bodie and others are factual. Victory credits alone are not a valid sole criteria if the aircrafts missions differ as much as the P-38/P-51s did.

As for victory credits the AAF credits the P-51 with 5,243 not 5900+. The P-51 enjoyed much better airfields so documentation was much better preserved that the P-38s which operated from unimproved strips in the MTO and PTO through much if not the entire war. The P-38 also had a poor location for it camera that produced poor and often unusable shots losing many victory credits. When the AAF redid the victory awards and required all the documentation a large number of P-38 kills were reversed.

My information is substantially correct whether or not you have found information contrary to that - histories involving war often are contradictory because they are written by people with opinions themselves.

Part of my info on P-38s/P-51s came directly from pilots themselves like Olds, Yeager, and Anderson. The Air force Diaries, and Fighter Group Histories.

The 8th AF disliked the P-38 many of the pilots fell that it was because the P-38 was available, could have reduced the bomber loss rate to an acceptable level but did not use it when the Congress was asking why the losses were so high. They belive the P-38 became the fall guy.

I will check out those sources you have provided.

I guess we can now agree to disagree.

Bill
 
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Bill - it was good to chat
 
davebender said:
The Lancaster Bomber probably did more to cripple the Luftwaffe from Spring 1944 onward then all other factors combined by destroying German hydrogenation plants. So how can anyone claim the P-51 was crucial to the Allied war effort?
Click to expand...
According to you,
3 September 1939. First RAF Bomber Command operation against Germany.
12 May 1944. First effective RAF Bomber Command attack on hydrogenation plants.
Click to expand...
(bold emphasis mine),
the Brits did not successfully attack the hydrogenation plants until mid May, 1944, only three weeks prior to D-Day. By that time the P-51Bs had been sweeping the skies over Germany of the Luftwaffe aircraft, shooting down nearly 1171 with many experienced pilots lost. Had these resources been available at D-Day, and the upcoming weather, it is easy to imagine valuable time being provided by the Luftwaffe for Panzer Group West to fully deploy and thus greatly impede the breakout and possibly pushing the invasion back to the beach. Months could have been added to the war and 10s of thousands dead.
 
You guys know a lot of details of the airplanes and war. I'm kind of a general knowledge guy, just a pilot really.

A couple of points;
If there were no P-51's and the P-38 were to be the front line fighter, there were a lot of factory airfields here in SoCal to fit the bill of building more. Not only the Vega plant in addition to the Burbank plant, but if the airplane were needed in the 20,000 count instead of the 10,000 count, NAA, and Douglas, as well as Vultee and Northrop were here as well. Plenty of know how and area in which to build them.

Anyone that believes the economy of the USA during that period could not sustain P-38's instead of P-51's is just biased. Sorry guys, this country was committed.

The engine point is that other auto and marine plants could've built the Allison, as I recall the Indy plant was pretty slow at getting stuff out and development was slow as well, at first. Once good service was being achieved the engine could've been built by Packard or some other factory constructed for the task very easily.

It was all possible, just as the Packard built Merlin and Dallas plants happened, so could have additional production. Possibly better, faster engineering innovations had the additional engineering and production personnel come to fruition, too.

Glass half full for the Lightning, always kinda liked them. Those of us in Los Angeles have two favorites, you know.

Chris...

P.S. Had the Army ordered as many Lockheed drops as could be produced early in the war, the long range techniques which make an airplane much more flexible, could have been developed to make the P-47 and the P-38 able to do deep escort. Pylons on early P-47D's and Lindbergh-type cruise power settings and it's a different ball game. The Army was out it's butt for some time on the subject... Doolittle and other bright operational minds were more responsible for doing well late in the war as any machine.
 
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