Emergency Water Injection

[cactus42]

I've read a few stories about the Pacific War (My favorite theatre) and I noticed the pilots' accounts of flying air-cooled carrier planes during moments of heated combat pursuit (or escape) would mention mashing the throttle all the way forward and enabling water-injection, which seemed to be some kind of horsepower enhancing thing... can somebody clarify what this was in fairly detailed technical explicity? I would be more than happy to know. Thanks.

Disregard above...I've found the info I needed in some previous threads.

 

[owen]

A mix of water and alcohol was injected into the airflow at the carb.
It would cool the airstream and make the less likley to detonate under
full throttle.

 

[cactus42]

Thanks Owen. WEP or "War Emergency Power" setting was the description of this capability, right? I'm amazed that pilots would have the presence of mind to use it or even remember it under such extreme battle conditions...but what do I know. I'm separated from their experiences by half a century and a vast gulf of technical ignorance about those machines they flew. I'm assuming it all worked out because our pilots were very well-trained and knew their planes down to the last nut bolt.

 

[Shortround6]

It can be amazing what some of those pilots could remember to do in an emergency, part of it was drill and practice. A friend of mine's father flew with VMF-124 at the end of the war and once told the story of crashing a Corsair while practicing a night take-off. Somebody turned on a bank of lights after he had the tail wheel up causing him to loose his night vision and he veered off the runway hitting things with wings along the way (like a bulldozer) and finally hitting a stack of cement pipe which flipped the plane causing it to land upside down. He remembers turning off the ignition switch/s before releasing his harness were upon he fell on his head being upside down at the time. The turn off ignition switches part being drilled into him but the need to check which way up you were apparently wasn't.