Effectiveness of the P-38 (4 Viewers)

[Tiger11]

My guess is they were paid more than the guys fighting in the war.

Good point!

 

[Frog]

Wasn't Lindbergh one of those tech advisors?

He had originally been sent in the PTO as a Vough representative to fix problems with the USMC F4Us.

 

[pinehilljoe]

Lindbergh was sent to the SW Pacific as a representative of United Aircraft, the conglomerate that owned Vaught, Pratt and Whitney and for a time Boeing. Reading accounts of when he was with the 5th AF, it must have been like Neil Armstrong showing up at your remote squadron airfield. John Bruning wrote in The Race for Aces, that Col MacDonald allowing Lindbergh to fly combat missions put a black mark on Col MacDonald's career. As great a leader as Mac was, he never rose above 0-6 in the Post-War USAF.

On one mission with the Satan's Angels, the flight consisted of Lindbergh, MacDonald, and McGuire; quite a team.

 

[Frog]

Lindbergh was sent to the SW Pacific as a representative of United Aircraft, the conglomerate that owned Vaught, Pratt and Whitney and for a time Boeing. Reading accounts of when he was with the 5th AF, it must have been like Neil Armstrong showing up at your remote squadron airfield. John Bruning wrote in The Race for Aces, that Col MacDonald allowing Lindbergh to fly combat missions put a black mark on Col MacDonald's career. As great a leader as Mac was, he never rose above 0-6 in the Post-War USAF.

On one mission with the Satan's Angels, the flight consisted of Lindbergh, MacDonald, and McGuire; quite a team.

While Lindbergh was finally rehabilitated and made Brigadier General by Eisenhower in 1954 .

 

[pbehn]

I thought that the P-38 was very effective in ending the use of twin engined interceptors by the Luftwaffe. The P-51 may have been better but the US would have to wait longer. Batting twin engined German fighters out of the game made the defence of Germany impossible, the number of Bf109s and Fw190s needed to cover all approaches is a fantasy number.

 

[Steamed_Banana]

Would it be churlish to point out that it has two engines? It therefore needs twice as many engines to make the same number of planes, you also need twice of a lot of other stuff like fuel, cooling systems gauges etc etc etc and the pilot needs more training to fly a twin in combat. However good the P-38 was and it was great in some roles, no one would ever think 10 x P-38s versus 20 x a contemporary single engined fighter was a great ida.

Two turbos too which counts for a lot in terms of logistics load I think

 

[PAT303]

He had originally been sent in the PTO as a Vough representative to fix problems with the USMC F4Us.

Wasn't he involved in getting the max range out of the P38 for the Yamato mission?

 

[Steamed_Banana]

Depends.
Feb 1944 10 x P-38Js vs 20 P-51Bs is a very bad idea.
However, in late summer and early fall of 1942 10 x P-38Gs might very well be a better deal than 20 x P-40Ks or 20 x P-39 K/L. Or Spitfires without two stage Merlins. When did Spitfire V production stop?

Interesting angle, I think considering the dates is in fact key. But I'm not sure I buy it. Looking at the operational history, it seems like unless you were a really unusual pilot (like with a last name like Bong or McGuire), the P-38 didn't really outstrip contemporaneous P-40s probably until late 1943. In the first of 1943 P-40F/Ls were doing better - definitely had a lower loss rate, in the Mediterranean than P-38s. In the CBI I'm pretty sure P-40 units scored more victories and took fewer losses than P-38 units did, on a squadron by squadron basis (keeping in mind there were more P-40 sqns), and while the picture isn't yet complete, so far in the Pacific (based on the research of Claringbould etc.) it looks pretty similar. 1942 is tricky because there was definitely a tipping point for both fighters where they started hitting much better outcomes, but I'm not sure off the top of my head when that was precisely. Some of the best / luckiest / most successful P-40 and P-38 pilots were flying out of the same units.

But the P-38 in any year of the war definitely has some capabilities that neither a P-39 or a P-40 have, but the question is, how much does that actually matter? The most significant in the Pacific was range and that is indeed a big one. Maybe enough to make the difference, range was important. The extra engine mattered a lot too, for making it back on those long flights home.

I like the P-38 a lot. It's a very advanced design and probably the best twin-engined non-jet fighter of the war by a pretty wide margin. It was just such a radical departure that it took a pretty long time to sort out a host of small and larger problems to make it really good. I'm not sure about the roll and turn rate issues per what Holtzauge originally said, but (perhaps over-optimistic?) estimates I've seen seem to suggest it's roll rate was really good, but maybe as he said roll acceleration wasn't up to snuff, I am not enough of a P-38 expert to say. As @JobinTheGoblin noted, it was still not fully living up to it's potential yet in the Pacific in 1943, despite the operational / strategic advantages conferred by it's good range and pretty good altitude performance. It wasn't always spectacular in terms of outcomes, though that would improve.

It seems like by the time you got to the P-38 L it was pretty much a beast of a fighter. I'm prepared to be proven wrong though (!?). And given the fact that it was around in time to still play a significant role in the war makes it quite unusual for advanced designs. Many of the coolest looking fighters with the coolests stats just never really mattered in the actual war. A P-38L was certainly more important to the war than a Ta 152.

 

[Steamed_Banana]

The F-4 version of the P-38 in RAAF service was abysmal. They had to use Wirraways, as the P-38 were so unreliable.

RAAF LIGHTNINGS 1PRU - The Lockheed File

I've noticed that in the relatively early war i.e. 1942 -43 period I usually focus on, PRU aircraft in general seemed to be pretty 'moribund' and P-38/ F-4s were particularly doom-prone. Do you happen to know if the F-5 recon version was more mission-effective? What is the major difference between P-38/F4 and P-38/F5?

Recon Hurricanes and Spit IV etc. seemed to die like flies in North Africa too...

 

[Steamed_Banana]

I thought that the P-38 was very effective in ending the use of twin engined interceptors by the Luftwaffe. The P-51 may have been better but the US would have to wait longer. Batting twin engined German fighters out of the game made the defence of Germany impossible, the number of Bf109s and Fw190s needed to cover all approaches is a fantasy number.

How early it starts to be effective really does matter a lot, IMO

 

[Steamed_Banana]

The trouble with the P-38 is it was initially conceived as an interceptor, used as a long range fighter and then switched to the fighter bomber role in the ETO...
All its imperfections, coupled with the pilots inexperience notwithstanding, it could fly at heights inconceivable for the P-39 and P-40, farther than both and the P-47, at a time when the Merlin P-51 was yet to be.

But one issue with the P-38 is that due to the compressibility and turbo etc. problems, it couldn't really exploit it's theoretical / potential altitude capability. It's sweet spot seemed to be in the low 20,000' range or thereabouts. At least until the later versions appeared.

 

[Steamed_Banana]

Some of the P-38s problems in the 20K ft area and escorting had some relatively simple fixes.
Aside from the compressibility problem most were 'own goals' by the Air Corp.
Lack of cockpit heat?
Should have shown up on somebodies desk in 1940-41 when the British couldn't operated early B-17s at altitude because the crews were freezing.
Lack of heat 2 (and getting home on one engine)?
Only using an generator on one engine saves money and weight.
But if the generator won't make enough electricity to do all the things you want (or if the engine with the generator fails) you are going to have problems. Should not have required months of combat experience to figure that out.
Incredibly bad training by the USAAC. The USAAC was teaching high revs and low boost cruise around 2 years after the British had given up on it. Maybe it helped mask the Generator problem?
Still is not going to turn a P-38 into a P-51.

Every new aircraft type had these kinds of problems, some more than others of course, but I think the P-38 had more than most simply because it was a couple of years ahead of it's time. At least in the sense of actually reaching scale production. There were other innovative fighters around the same time which look great on paper but they didn't make it out to squadrons in multiple Theaters by the mid-war like the P-38 did.

 

[Steamed_Banana]

Again, my point was never about roll rate. It was about roll acceleration. The Bf-109 has a quite unremarkable roll rate and the P-38 will definitely produce a higher roll rate at higher speeds, especially with the boosted ailerons. But my point was about the initial response: And while a high speed train will eventually reach a higher top speed than the go-cart, the go-cart will beat you to the end of the field.

Here is a pilot quote from Dean's American 100 thousand on page 160: "It was disconcerting to have a fighter barreling in on you, crank the wheel hard over, and just have the P-38 sit there. Then, after it slowly rolled the first five or ten degrees of bank it would turn quickly, but the hesitation was sweat-producing".

I'd love to see some general stats on roll acceleration by fighter type, is there such a thing?

 

[Steamed_Banana]

So the dive brakes fitted later on the later P-38 was not there primarily to keep the speed down, but actually put there to maintain the lift on the inner portions of the wing (which also helped with the downwash on the stabilizer). But it still seems this never really solve the problem completely, and the limit Mach number in dives for the P-38 continued to be lower than for both the P-51 and P-47 for its entire service life as far as I know.

PS: Thanks for linking back to that old thread tomo pauk. Seems to contain a lot of good information on dive limits!

Super interesting, thanks for clarifying that

 

[Tiger11]

Some of the P-38s problems in the 20K ft area and escorting had some relatively simple fixes.
Aside from the compressibility problem most were 'own goals' by the Air Corp.
Lack of cockpit heat?
Should have shown up on somebodies desk in 1940-41 when the British couldn't operated early B-17s at altitude because the crews were freezing.
Lack of heat 2 (and getting home on one engine)?
Only using an generator on one engine saves money and weight.
But if the generator won't make enough electricity to do all the things you want (or if the engine with the generator fails) you are going to have problems. Should not have required months of combat experience to figure that out.
Incredibly bad training by the USAAC. The USAAC was teaching high revs and low boost cruise around 2 years after the British had given up on it. Maybe it helped mask the Generator problem?
Still is not going to turn a P-38 into a P-51.

Lindbergh turned USAAC training on its ear and showed by example on those "unlawful" combat flights that high boost, low RPM and auto-lean made gasoline instead of burning it.

 

[Steamed_Banana]

I personally don't rate the A6M or Ki 43 after 1942, yes they could be dangerous at low speeds but neither were air superiority aircraft.

The facts don't bear that out mate

 

[PAT303]

The facts don't bear that out mate

Lets be honest they were effective because of the environment they fought in, would you fly an A6M across the channel in 1942-43 or likewise back they other way into English airspace?. Going up against the best integrated air defense systems either side of the channel controlling the best pilots and fighter aircraft in the world in a glorified soft drink can isn't my idea of fun.

 

[PAT303]

But the P-38 in any year of the war definitely has some capabilities that neither a P-39 or a P-40 have, but the question is, how much does that actually matter? The most significant in the Pacific was range and that is indeed a big one. Maybe enough to make the difference, range was important. The extra engine mattered a lot too, for making it back on those long flights home.

The P38 is like the F4U in the fact they just took too long to get sorted out. The P51 and Hellcat filled the rolls required and were universally liked by their pilots, the FAA pilots as examples liked the performance of the Corsair but preferred the Hellcat because of it's docile handling, ultimately by the time both were sorted the war had moved on.

 

[Thumpalumpacus]

Wasn't he involved in getting the max range out of the P38 for the Yamato mission?

No. Yamamoto was shot down in April 1943. Lindbergh wasn't in SWPAC until the spring of 1944. Lindbergh had nothing to do with that mission.

 

[drgondog]

Lindbergh was sent to the SW Pacific as a representative of United Aircraft, the conglomerate that owned Vaught, Pratt and Whitney and for a time Boeing. Reading accounts of when he was with the 5th AF, it must have been like Neil Armstrong showing up at your remote squadron airfield. John Bruning wrote in The Race for Aces, that Col MacDonald allowing Lindbergh to fly combat missions put a black mark on Col MacDonald's career. As great a leader as Mac was, he never rose above 0-6 in the Post-War USAF.

On one mission with the Satan's Angels, the flight consisted of Lindbergh, MacDonald, and McGuire; quite a team.

I personally don't buy that suggestion by Bruning, that the 'black mark' of his forced leave killed his career. He was promoted to full Colonel upon return.

I do agree that FDR hated Lindbergh, but I also know that he was well respected by Arnold and many in thechain of command. When FDR passed I believe any command directive from 'on high' disappeared as well. MacDonald did command the 23rdFIG during Korean War. Had the stain remained, he would never have been given a command afterwards.

Recall that Zemke, Gabreski and Blakeslee never passed 0-6 post WWII. Suspect that he, along with many other O-6 that didn't make General and that Olds didn't make General until after Viet Nam. I hate to use the phrase 'perfumed prince' but none of the above mentioned warriors were chairborne warriors at the pentagon.

Edit: To clarify, Olds was in Plans Div at Pentagon in 58. My father's office was next to his.