How good a plane was the P-40, really?

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The height difference was solely because they went from a "long nose" Allison (as in a "C" series) to an "F" series.

C-Series below:


F-Series side view below:


Note the prop shaft in the top pic is below the cylinder heads and about in the middle of the cylinder heads in the F-series drawing. I doubt extremely seriously it was a desired propeller position change. Rather, it was a consequence of the different prop shaft locations in the F-series engine as opposed to the earlier nose case prop shaft position. The alternative would have been to lower the F-series engine the amount of the change, which was structurally and aerodynamically an unsound option without a major redesign, and the entire P-40 airplane came about by changing engines from a radial to an inline WITHOUT a major redesign, so a redesign to change prop shaft height was never going to be done.
 
Yes, they deliberately made the nose long so that they could improve the streamlining, but that imposed limitations due to the gearbox design constraints associated with the gears employed.

Note that the Lightning Mk I, or RP-322, had the same C series engines, and that was done deliberately because the British were buying the Tomahawk I at the time and wanted to improve the logistics associated with the introduction of a new engine type.

The picture below says a lot about the P-40's durability. Note that what must be P-40E's as well as P-40N's are in the photo, which means those E models had been fighting in the incredibly harsh conditions of AK for YEARS. Edwards Park, who flew P-39's and P-400's in the Solomans, said a friend of his with a P-40 unit came to visit said sorrowfully, "We'll never get any new airplanes because these P-40's refuse to wear out."


 
Hi
Can you define what you mean by British pilots being "mostly more aristocratic leaning" as any casual glace at the bios in books like 'Aces High' by Shores and Williams does not indicate that many aristocrats "leaning" or otherwise? Presumably you have looked at various sources to make this statement?
Also I suppose there is the question of how to define 'working class' as Gibbes father is reported to have been a 'grazier' with large land holdings (having the skills of a 'jackeroo' could be very useful on your father's land), online sources also state that Gibbes was a "salesman" when he applied to join the RAAF but does not say what he was selling.
This has to be questioned as this sort of comment has been made about social differences between 'British' and 'Australians' in the RFC/AFC during WW1 but research by historians such as Michael Molkentin, such as his article in the Journal of the Australian War Memorial, '"Unconscious of any distinction"? Social and vocational quality in the Australian Flying Corps, 1914-1918' (you should be able to find that online if you wish) indicates that the AFC recruited from the same social, educational and other requirements as the RFC.
So data on the differences in 'social' class between the majority of pilots in the RAF and the RAAF would be interesting.

Mike
 
With notable exceptions both ways, in both forces the bulk of pilots were middle class. Grammar school rather than Public school if you will. Other air crew were socially lower (apologies for them for the terminology) generally. Early air gunners were drawn from the aircraftsmen working on the aeroplanes. The aristocratic RAF is a meme created by Hollywood. Much the same can be said of the British army historically over generations, being made of middle class sons and younger sons of the minor aristocracy with a leavening of promotions from the ranks.
 

Yes, I'm mainly going by the fighter Aces, whose bios I'm fairly familiar with, and the unit leadership from the Wing commanders up to the top levels, the generals and theater commanders.

These are the top commonwealth aces who flew P-40s in North Africa / Middle East, from list in the back of the Osprey book. Most of these guys were also squadron or wing commanders at some point.

British
Neville Duke (27 victories) - Went to a private school in Kent where one of the buildings was named after his family.
Billy Drake (24 victories) Drake was part Australian, he was also a Catholic and of Irish heritage, but definitely of 'gentleman' rank.
Maurice Sydney Hards (7 victories) - originated in South Africa, but ended up in RAF. Couldn't find anything about his background.
Q. V. Hanbury (10 victories) Graduate of Eton

Aussies
Bobby Gibbes (10 victories) already discussed. I'd say working or middle class.
Nicky Barr (12 victories) born in New Zealand, trained as an accountant. Semi-pro rugby player. I'd say middle class.
Clive Caldwell (26 victories) apparently a high school drop out, from Sydney. Middle class. Forged papers to get into RAAF via Empire Air Training Scheme.
Robert James C Whittle (11 victories) couldn't find anything about family or background.
Peter Turnbill (12 victories) electrician, enlisted in the militia. I'd say working class.

South African
John Lloyd Waddy (15 victories) father owned a real estate firm, sounds like 'gentleman' ... he was born in Africa apparently but ended up in the RAAF so he's between SA and Oz
Neville Bowker (10 victories) couldn't find anything about his family or background
Douglas W Golding (8 victories) couldn't find anything about family or background
Eric Cowley Saville (8 victories) went to Durban High School in Natal. Sounds like working or middle class.
John E Frost (14 victories) joined SAAF at age of 18, butt I couldn't find anything about his life.
A C Bosman (8 victories) found a bio but it starts with his enlistment.

Canadian
James Francis Edwards (19 victories) Worked on a farm and 'hunted wildfowl' for a living (where he learned to lead shots). RCAF as flight sergeant I think working class.


I guess the real status of being a 'grazier' depends on the quality of the land and what kind of livestock it supports. A 'large land holding' of desert with a few score sheep doesn't necessarily make you a lord. I know they do have green areas in Australia too though and hundreds of acres of grassy land with cattle certainly would get you into the ball park.


I hope the above helps a little. I didn't mention it to drive a wedge between British and Australian people, but rather because it was clearly a factor in the war. The British system in North Africa during WW2 was very hierarchical, the top commanders were mainly peers from families in the House of Lords, many of the pilots were from the gentleman's or lower aristocratic estates and largely did as they were told. These were all very well educated and smart people, with good discipline and highly courageous, but they certainly also had their blind spots.

The Aussies by contrast seemed to be much more undisciplined, but also more creative and willing to think outside of the box, including where it required them to buck authority. Caldwell was the first to (very forecefully) suggest that they start using fighter bombers in lieu of Blenheims for attacking the front-line areas. He also instituted the 'shadow-shooting' gunnery training system, as when got there there wasn't any. Australian pilots and ground crew appear to have been the first ones to (against orders) start using higher boost ratings on their Kittyhawks. Many other innovations of this type, and the occasional angry freak out, defined the Australian pilots. I think the Aussies or South Africans were also the ones pushing for the adoption of finger four formations and the Big Wing tactic, both of which the high command was slow to introduce. And for better radios.

To their credit, the British maintained morale and used the best of these ideas, and promoted several of the trouble makers like Caldwell. The Australian and British aces were close friends in spite of yawning chasms of class. So ultimately it worked out well.
 
This clip is more fantasy than reality, but it's fun to imagine a world where doing things this way would actually be a good idea:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meXCmuXoxuA
 
I think it's a really fine line you have to walk. Not all troublemakers are of the productive type. But in this case it seems that most were, and the British leadership in the DAF did a very good job of managing them in the long run, though not without some drama along the way. They even successfully wrangled the Americans.
 
Hi
I don't think Caldwell was a "drop out" he decided not to take the 'final exams', I suspect that unless you wanted to go to university there was not much point in that era? However, it appears he worked as a 'commissioning agent', whatever that is, but he must have had enough money coming in as he learnt to fly in 1938 at the Royal Aero Club of NSW.
Saville's Durban High School appears to have been (still is?) a Public School with a big interest in Rugby judging by their website.

Which RAF "Lords" are you thinking of? 'Lord' Tedder only became a Lord post war, there was also Lord Cameron of Balhousie (again post war title) who as Neil Cameron in 1942 was flying Hurricanes with No. 213 Squadron, mainly on ground attacks. He was the son of a retired Company Sergeant Major of the Seaforth Highlanders (who died when Neil was 3), at 16 he became an apprentice bank clerk but also joined the RAFVR and became a sergeant pilot before the war and was commissioned on 31 July 1941. He later became Chief of the Air Staff and then Chief of the Defence Staff during the 1970s.
Another Hurricane pilot in NA was Sgt. James Dodds, who Shores & Williams claim was the highest scoring Hurricane pilot in NA (in 7 months of 1941-1942) while with 274 Sqn. Interestingly page 223 of their book it states "Reportedly, whenever hostile formations were encountered, he at once climbed as high as possible, then hovered above the main engagement and picked-off chosen victims." The majority of his claims are fighters, he was flying Hurricane IIb and IIcs.

Of course the majority of pilots were not aces or even flying fighters and were outside of North Africa, so it is a poor data base for an overall 'class judgement'.

We should also note BoB ace Bob Doe from Reigate, Surrey who started work as an 'office boy' on the News of the World, but also joined the RAFVR in 1938 and was commissioned in January 1939, again not very aristocratic, and there are many others in the RAF.

Mike
 

Caldwell was definitely middle class, I can dive into that more if need be, but I don't really see the point.

MikeMeech said:
Saville's Durban High School appears to have been (still is?) a Public School with a big interest in Rugby judging by their website.

Which RAF "Lords" are you thinking of? 'Lord' Tedder only became a Lord post war,
Click to expand...
From the wiki:

[Sir Arthur] "Tedder was born the son of Sir Arthur John Tedder and Emily Charlotte Tedder (née Bryson)"

I don't know what your definition of working class is, but for me that ain't it.

During his career Tedder apparently clashed with Lord Beaverbrook (newspaper tycoon), then he got his first promotion when his rival Owen Tudor Boyd (not only has Tudor in his name, but a Sandhurst graduate) got captured. Tedder was named 'Knight commander of the order of the Bath" in June 1942, then "Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath" on 27 November.

Colleagues included Sir William Forster Dickson, son of a lawyer at the Royal Courts of Justice, educated at Bowden House and a direct descendant (on his mother's side) of Lord Nelson, Robert Forster (public school graduate [Winchester College] and also another Sandhurst graduate) .


Well, that may be the case, but that was the context of my original post that you were responding to mate, i.e. the conduct of the war by the Desert Air Force vis a vis it's members. There was 100% a class divide between the Australian and British pilots and commanders, and all of the Australian and some of the British pilots commented on this more than once.


I never said, nor even implied, that there were no working class pilots in the RAF. But the leadership and many of the pilots were clearly upper class and of the aristocratic or gentleman's estates. There are a lot of 'sirs' in there when you read the bios. I don't know any 'sirs' personally and I know a lot of people.
 
I think you should travel around Australia before describing it as desert with a few sheep. Australia has been supplying the world with best quality meat and cereal agriculture products for over a century, we also have a thriving wild game industry because we are free from common diseases found in the rest of the world, those graziers you speak off want for nothing and have built dynasty's.
 

Please re-read the post you quoted:

"A 'large land holding' of desert with a few score sheep doesn't necessarily make you a lord. I know they do have green areas in Australia too though and hundreds of acres of grassy land with cattle certainly would get you into the ball park."
I have never been there, but I personally know many Australians today via another hobby I'm into, and am a fan and supporter of the Aussies in WW2, particularly but not only the pilots. I'm well aware that Australia is a rich country today, though that was not always the case. This seems like a little bit of faux outrage, IMO. Certainly nothing related to what I posted. There are both very dry and desert bush zones as well as the green and arable ones, and a lot more of the former than the latter.

I used to have a close work colleague and friend who I talked to about once a week who lived in Kalgoorlie and later in Alice Springs. He used to send us photos all the time. You do actually have some desert there and there are sheep stations and so on.

 

I want to revisit this very good point made by BarnOwlLover.

I think in the US, and in the Anglophone sphere more generally, we have a tendency to think in simplistic, a-historical terms, and with WW2 aircraft inevitably feel the steep pull of the end of the war and the 'final' / 'ultimate' 'top dog' fighters which (theoretically) dominated all opposition.

But that is a really tricky, and often misleading thing. Planes like the Ta -152H and the P-47M and the P-51H, the F8 Bearcat and the Sea Fury and Spitfire Mk 24 which a lot of people really love, and which are "Teh Awesome" in online airplane war games, really didn't matter in WW2. They were essentially irrelevant.

By the time the Me 262 and Ar 234 were flying, the clock was ticking on ALL propeller driven fighters. Only the slow arrival into front-line units, and the mistaken use of the 262 as a bomber really allowed some of the later model Allied fighters to still matter.



The most important Allied fighter at the end of the war was really this goofy looking thing, The De Havilland Vampire, because it was (arguably) the first viable jet fighter that (unlike Gloster Meteor and P-80 etc.) didn't crash and have flameouts and kill it's own pilots constantly. The Vampire was 80 mph faster than a Ta-152, had a ceiling of 42,000', climbed at 4,800 fpm / 24 m/s, and also had good range of 1200 miles, a heavy armament of 4 x 20mm cannon (with 150 rounds per gun), concentrated in the nose. Handling was very good, it recovered from stalls quickly, it had good roll and a reasonable wing loading, and was pretty easy to fly. And it's prototype was flying from 1943, went into production (albeit very slowly) in May 1944.

No propeller driven fighter could really compete with it.

And then a bit later you had the MiG 15 and the F-86. Prop fighters are now basically a curiosity or for CAS / fighter bomber use.

IMO the jet really casts a dark shadow over later WW2 prop fighters. And it kind of obviates the obsession with the top designs from late in the war that either did not or barely saw any combat. These are nice designs but what makes a WW2 aircraft relevant and therefore viable, is whether it was available in some numbers in time to matter during actual battles during the war.

Even if it's just a couple hundred planes, if they were in place to fight in a part of the world where one of the critical battles was taking place, they mattered. The Hurricane in the Battle of Britain and around the world into 1942. The Spitfire from the Battle of Britain through the end of the war. The Wildcat, for all it's flaws, in the Pacific especially in 1942 and 1943. The P-40 in a lot of the world from 1942 through early 1944. The Bf 109 for the whole war, the Fw 190 from 1942 to the end, the Ki-43 and the A6M well into 1944. The MC.202 in 1942-43, the Yak-1/7/9 from 1942 and (from 1943) the La 5/7 and the P-39 in Russia. The F2A in Finland through 1943. The P-38 particularly in the Pacific from 1942. The F4U from 1943, the F6F in the Pacific from later 1943. The P-51B/C/D from 1943. These planes mattered a lot in specific Theaters of the war.

And in earlier periods of the war and the precursor wars like in Manchuria or the Spanish Civil War, planes like the Fiat CR 32, the I-153 and I-16, the Gloster Gladiator and the Hawk 75 all mattered a great deal. I think when assessing types we have to keep the relevance in mind. To me, any 1944 or 1945 design flies under the shadow of the Me 262.
 
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I think the focus on the bomber offensive from 1944 and on late war air combat in general is one of the main reasons why very good, quite important aircraft like the Ki-43, A6M, Yak-1 /7 / 9, La 5 /7 series, and the MC.202 don't get the respect they deserve.

It's also why even though I am quick point out the problems with the Hurricane in 1943 or 1944, I also keep pointing out it's crucial importance in 1940-41.
 
I really wish people would not compress time at the end of WW II or make the 1944-46 jets into something that they weren't.

It went into production slowly because the engines were not ready.
In 1943 at first flight the engine gave 2100lbs of thrust.
By early 1944 the engine was giving 2700lbs of thrust.
The Goblin II engine was good for 3000lbs of thrust and this was the engine that was used in many of the Vampire F. I aircraft. Speed was 540mph at low level and 510mph at 30,000ft. Better than the piston planes but not quite 80 mph at the higher altitudes.
Climb was 4,300fpm.
Range was 730 miles.

Things did improve but production Vampire F. 1s didn't roll out the door until April 1945.
The Goblin 3 engine showed up with around 3,400lbs of thrust.
Much increased internal fuel (1480 liters) boosted range and a pair of drop tanks (454 liters each) increased it to the 1200mile range quoted, it just wasn't done in WW II.
Depending on engine and fuel the 4800fpm climb may have been possible.
Early troubles were that the engine could NOT be restarted in flight. On the ground they were started with a 24v battery cart.
Until ejector seats were fitted bailing out was rather iffy.
Wild_Bill_Kelso said:
And then a bit later you had the MiG 15 and the F-86. Prop fighters are now basically a curiosity or for CAS / fighter bomber use.
Click to expand...
Bit later was about 2 1/2 years from end of war in Europe to flights of the Prototype Mig 15 and XP-86.
Or about the time from Jan 1943 to end of the war in Europe. Neither the Mig -15 nor the XP-86 were really ready for service in 1947. XP-86 swapped engines from the J-35 to the J-47 for one thing.
Both entered squadron service in early 1949. Almost 4 years after WW II ended in Europe.
 
Sure, but the Me 262 was flying combat missions in mid 1944.

If they had fielded more of them, the Goblin engine and the Vampire would have gotten more resources and been made ready much faster.
 
Wild_Bill_Kelso said:
Sure, but the Me 262 was flying combat missions in mid 1944.

If they had fielded more of them, the Goblin engine and the Vampire would have gotten more resources and been made ready much faster.
Click to expand...
fine speed things up by a year then, First Vampire F.1s were delivered to 247 Squadron in April 1946 at Odiham. So first squadron in April 1945?

They started design work on the Vampire airframe in 1942 and the first mock up was ready Sept 1942.
BTW the early planes used 917 liters of fuel. You have to balance the weight of the fuel with the power of the engine and the power was increasing faster than the increase in piston engines. If you want production aircraft you have 'fix' the design and stop improving things. (P-59 was an example of 'fixing" things a little too early in order to get something into "production").
 
33k in the air said:
That takes me back. I spent many an hour flying in Red Baron and Red Baron II. In fact, I still have the manuals to both games, as these were from the time when game manuals were often fine, worthy books in their own right.
Click to expand...

I have a couple of other classic game manuals, for Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe, Aces of the Pacific, and Aces of the Deep, all of which have good historical sections. Just couldn't get rid of them.

I remember too how the original Red Baron game with a set of printed maps of the Western Front that you could use to navigate when flying in the game.
 
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