wuzak
Captain
Heard that claim on a video by Greg's Airplanes and Automobiles, though he seems to be quoting the Lockheed-Martin site.
How good (or bad) was the P-38, really?
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Heard that claim on a video by Greg's Airplanes and Automobiles, though he seems to be quoting the Lockheed-Martin site.
Probably some young contract web developer hired to do the website with no clue how to access Lockheed's archives or even that such things exist. With all the mergers and reshuffles, could be a lot of those archives misplaced or discarded.
A young new hire maintenance helper at the airline was detailed to go through the the stuff stashed along one of the mezzanine decks in the hangar and throw out the trash and organize the rest. I happened to see him headed out to the dumpster lugging an ugly water-damaged cardboard box that piqued my curiosity. Turned out it was all the old maintenance logs for the granddaddy of our fleet, a 1957 Fokker F27, that was currently running a RR Dart engine on the right side that dated all the way back to 1948 and had a four digit serial number. That engine was running on its fifth airframe, had been reconfigured into five different dash numbers over its life, and had the superseded data plates strung together on a wire ring in the box. Needless to say, that box never made it to the dumpster. Excrement occurs.
SaparotRob
Unter Gemeine Geschwader Murmeltier XIII
Out of curiosity, which plane was the Allied PR champ? I'm thinking Spitfire although perhaps the Mosquito might hold the title.
special ed
2nd Lieutenant
- 5,733
- May 13, 2018
Life Magazine was prone to exaggeration in the war years, especially early years, as a morale booster for the home folks.
drgondog
Major
Difficult to explain in short answer. Politics, Bureaucracies and incompetence played a role. Inexperience played a role. Lack of foresight played a role.
Some Edits below for context:
1. IMO, while Eaker inherited Monk Hunter (Spaatz pick) to run VIII FC. Hunter, like Spaatz, and like Eaker served in AAC when heavy bombardment matured into high altitude fast attack and operating above existing Pursuit designs - in the late 1930s. Their vision of future escort was that of Destroyer protecting cargo convoys - fence out threats but always remain close. That said, the conundrum was the belief that only twin engine aircraft were perceived feasible for long range escort - but concept remained through XP-75. The VIII Service Command in 1942 was staffed by combat rookies trying to learn from RAF (when they occasionally listened). The problems experienced with P-47C and P-38F led Service Command to form an Air Technical Services department in late 1942- with shining star Maj Cass Hough. That said, Hunter did place a request to Brits to produce 75 and 110 gallon tanks (Jan/Feb 1943) but either Hunter or Eaker failed to manage the process - even if Air Services was ultimately responsible.
2. Pre-war, the use of auxiliary external fuel was solely for ferry - combat use was specifically codified as 'verboten'. The directive to 'change our thinking' was driven by Arnold in January 1942 in his Fighter Conference to drive Fighter Range and Performance but operational pursuit aircraft in AAF inventory were only P-38, 39 and 40. MC was nudged in March but only the 60 and 75 gal steel combat tanks were even in test in summer of 1942. The 110 and150 had not started testing. Prior to the Fighter Conference Kelsey and Johnson collaborated to provide extended range for the F-4, specifically in December 1941. Additionally Lockheed designed a 150 and 300 gal steel Ferry tank.
The Mustang was not in the inventory but Edgar Schmued/NAA execs were not beholden to AAF Materiel Command restrictions and designed Low Level Attack Pursuit (A-36) with dual purpose external racks and internal plumbing. The A-36 Design Specification stipulated dual fuel/bomb pylon in Dec 1941. External bomb racks were designed and tested quietly with tacit approval by AAF-MC on P-38E as kits in December 1941 and production article in P-38F. Neither NAA nor Lockheed design provided for pressurization system for external tanks but the plumbing was designed for both to accommodate 15,000 feet.
3. Wright Field tested for performance - not operational suitability. Eglin Field was just emerging in the role of operational suitability. B-17s, B-24s, P-38s and P-47s entering combat operations in 1942/early 1943 had not been suitably tested at high altitude - nor had AAF-MC as yet delivered on either the 60 or 75 gallon combat tank. Only Ferry tanks were being produced - in limited quantities. The P-47C was delivered without the center keel/bomb rack capable of carrying both bomb and fuel tanks - but neither 38 or 47 had pressurization systems to feed from external tank to engine.
Contrast versus A-36 and P-51A which inherited many constructive requirements from RAF on NA 73/83 and 91 prior to first flight of NA-73X in October 1940. NOTE NO BUREAUCRATIC interference from AAF-MC - "not invented here'. The pressurization was solved by Cass Hough, followed by production insertion on P51B-5 in Nov 1943. But neither P-38J nor P47D had production article until approx March-April 1944.
Not all the issues regarding LR escort modifications were caused by MC. AAF MC proposed (Jan 1943) to Lockheed and Republic that they modify the P-38/47 to carry more external ferry tank fuel, but also that P-47 be equipped to employ wing racks and plumbing for ferry tanks. Lockheed complied quickly but Republic failed to produce the wing mods until April 1944. When General Barney Giles pressed Lockheed, NAA, Bell, Curtiss and Republic to add more internal fuel - July 7, 1943 - NAA tested first fuselage fuel tank on July 18, Lockheed in September, but Republic took until the D-25 was delivered in ETO FGs in May 1944 to add 70 gallons to fuselage tankage.
While the P-51B proceeded with AAF-MC blessings it was NEVER contemplated by either MC or AAF-HQ as anything but a continuation of A-36, P-51A and General Saville - Chief Air Defense - was The decision maker for combat allocations dutifully assigned ALL Mustangs to TAC. To this day it is inexplicable that Eaker agreed to let the P-51B got to 2nd TAC without a fight - it took Spaatz, Arnold and Eisenhower face to face with Portal to extract from Leigh-Mallory.,
4. Too many folks point to Kenney as example of early deployment of external tanks on P-47 and ask why not for VIII AF? The answer is pretty simple. The SWP with long flights over water were essentially 'unmolested' en-route and 180 degrees from ETO threat experience, where our fighters were under threat 26 miles (or thereabouts) from England. Applying Kenney Doctrine to ETO would have resulted in a lot of 'crispy' P-47s IMO. Cass Hough was every bit as capable as Pappy Gunn.
5. As to VIII Air Technical Services not having 'A team' to solve Major P-38 design flaws for operating at high altitudes? Unfair. Kelly Johnson was very aware in 1942 of the limitations of wing installed intercoolers to support HP > 1000Hp - but Lockheed engineers and MC engineers/procurement did not receive a whiff of the major high altitude issues confronting operational P-38s in ETO until late 1942. Recall that all ETO P-38s were shipped to Africa before cold weather set in in ETO. Also, for the Eaker 'haters', he was bitter about having his planned, requested and approved priority for P-38 as first choice escorts pulled from him two months after first combat ops. You can directly trace losses during Big Week through Schweinfurt to the absence of P-38 escort - warts and all.
Additionally, Allison was delivering better engines with more HP than the Intercoolers on E/F/G/H could support - and the early J was a disaster as far as high altitude engine/intercooler/turbo powerplant operations. VIII ATS did not have the Depot capacity to re-engineer the P-38 Powerplant configuration - also not in their job jar. They succeeded admirably in modifying existing P-47C/D with pylon wing/fuel feed but took more elapsed time for single mod than production of 30+ P-47s in the US.
Shortround covered the major issues clearly and exhaustively above.
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GrauGeist
Generalfeldmarschall zur Luftschiff Abteilung
On the subject of PR types, Saint-Exupery was flying a French F-5B when he went MIA in 1944.
FLYBOYJ
"THE GREAT GAZOO"
From Wiki;
The P-38L was the most numerous variant of the Lightning, with 3,923 built, 113 by Consolidated-Vultee in their Nashville plant. It entered service with the USAAF in June 1944, in time to support the Allied invasion of France on D-Day. Lockheed production of the Lightning was distinguished by a suffix consisting of a production block number followed by "LO," for example "P-38L-1-LO", while Consolidated-Vultee production was distinguished by a block number followed by "VN," for example "P-38L-5-VN."
The P-38L was the first Lightning fitted with zero-length rocket launchers. Seven high velocity aircraft rockets (HVARs) on pylons beneath each wing, and later, five rockets on each wing on "Christmas tree" launch racks which added 1,365 lb (619 kg) to the aircraft. The P-38L also had strengthened stores pylons to allow carriage of 2,000 lb (900 kg) bombs or 300 US gal (1,100 l) drop tanks.
Deleted member 68059
Staff Sergeant
- 1,058
- Dec 28, 2015
I dont know, but in order to clear up the P-38 PR percentage question, I`m trying to trawl some archives to find some post war "Historical Review" documents, which do exist for some other notable operational areas of the war. If they dont exist, it comes down to adding up mission stats from monthly reports, which would be months of work...and such records
always tend to have huge gaps. I`ll let you know if I find out anything on Spitfire/Mossie PR ratios (not on this thread though!)
drgondog
Major
Joe - I'm shocked but suspect that WiKi is wrong. From all the operations details I have reviewed, for sure not even the J-25 went operational in VIII FC through September 1944 when 479th converted to P-51s. Robin remembers that one J-25 was on the base in mid September for familiarization but he stated that he didn't fly it (that one). IIRC The 474th flew the L in November 1944.
VintageIron
Airman
- 43
- Aug 10, 2020
Were any engines other than Allison ever fitted to the P-38? I wonder what a pair of Rolls-Royce/Packard Merlins would have been like performance wise compared to the Allison's.
wuzak
Captain
The IV-1430 was fitted to the XP-49, which was essentially an "improved" P-38. I believe it even had the same wing.
Does that count?
FLYBOYJ
"THE GREAT GAZOO"
See this thread...
THE MYSTICAL MERLIN POWERED P-38
This has been an on-going discussion on this forum since I first joined. Many have talked about a proposal undertaken by Lockheed to see the feasibility of installing a Merlin XX into a P-38 airframe. In 1982 I attended a Lockheed Management Club dinner where Kelly Johnson was the guest...
ww2aircraft.net
FLYBOYJ
"THE GREAT GAZOO"
I remember your comments about Robin with regards to this a few months ago.
FLYBOYJ
"THE GREAT GAZOO"
Calum, as always great information. It's quite obvious that this claim by LM is not true, my guess is some mis-informed intern in their PA department somewhere in Georgia or Fort Worth put this statement out. Now could it be said that the P-38 captured 90% of all USAAF PR photos taken over WW2 Europe?I was recently told with utter incredulity that someone has been going around claiming that the P-38 captured 90% of all PR photos taken over WW2 europe.
Some digging found this was from Wikipedia, who in turn cite the Lockheed Martin website, who in turn (apparently not having used their own archives at all?)
cite thre books and a LIFE Magazine article for their official P-38 webpage.
The P-38: When Lightning Strikes
A new American fighter, the P-38 Lightning, peeled down from the skies over Iceland on August14, 1942. True to its name, it was akin to a force of nature: fast, unforeseen, and immensely powerful.www.lockheedmartin.com
I began to have very serious doubts about the scholarly integrity of the webpage within the first few sentences:
"Within six months, as the P-38 showed its versatility in North Africa, a lone hysterical German pilot surrendered to soldiers at an Allied camp near Tunisia, pointing up to the sky and repeating one phrase—"der Gableschwanz Teufl"—over and over."
(this is total nonsense, as has been thoroughly proven to be so on this very forum).
Anyway... this webpage also says:
"P-38 ... as a reconnaissance aircraft, obtained 90 percent of the aerial film captured over Europe"
I found this statistically immensely unlikely, even if the F5 had five cameras fitted.
So I emailed the National Collection of Aerial Photography (incidentally here in Scotland, amazingly), who gave me the following information today:
"That amounts to 22,372 missions of which 18805 are RAF-flown, and 3567 are USAAF-flown. We do not have a frame count available for each sortie, so these figures can only give an indication of the split in effort...This includes missions flown from the UK, Allied-occupied Europe, Italy, Gibraltar and North Africa."
They have 5.5million frames, but state some were shredded, so as he says, these figures are only useful as a relative split. not absolute numbers.
Therefore, even if EVERY single USAAF mission used the P-38, and if ALL of those were the F5 with five cameras, and if ALL the RAF PR aircraft only had ONE camera,
thats still less than the RAF total number of frames taken (naturally this assumes for this very broad point that all aircraft took about the same number of
frames per mission, per camera, which I`m sure isnt true as you`ll have all sorts of different mission parameters).
For Lockheed`s website to be correct, we not only have to skew the data as above, but we then still have to somehow multiply the P-38 images taken
by NINE times.
I like many, strongly suspect that the truth is that the P-38 took 90% of all images over Europe as taken by the USAAF.
I also asked the National Collection of Aerial Photography about the USAAF split in PR aircraft used, who replied:
"At a superficial level, most US-flown sorties in Europe would have employed the F-4/F-5 variant of the P-38"
Lockheed cite the following sources for their webpage, sadly I do not have all of these so cannot say if indeed any of them
actually say 90% of ALL PR missions over Europe or just USAAF ? Can anyone come up with anything further.
Certainly from the response I had from NCAP, the Lockheed claim seems statistically very unlikely.
(These are the sources that Lockheed Martin used to write their webpage, of which I`ve only read Stanaways book)
View attachment 636422
Shortround6
Major General
No, except as noted for the XP-49.
There were 3 design studies at different times using different Merlins and Allisons and of differing depth/detail.
The Allison used high compression in the cylinders and got marginally better fuel consumption. Trading exhaust thrust for the losses in powering the turbo also have advantages in cruise at high altitudes for the Allison (if flown correctly) so the decisions factored in both range and projected engine availability in addition to just speed and climb.
The decision was usually that difference in performance (on paper) wasn't worth disrupting supply chains/production.
I believe the 1st study compared the Merlin XX/Packard V-1650-1 to the V-1710-F2 used in the YP-38s.
Another study was done in 1942 between the Merlin 61 and the V-1710-F17 using core type intercoolers which did not show up in service for another year.
A late war study compared a V-1710G (up to 3400rpm) to an advanced Merlin capable of 2000hp in War Emergency.
This onw was done after the P-38K was turned down to avoid production disruption /delays and both planes in the study would have used different reduction gears, larger propellers and needed the changed thrust line of the XP-38K.
Shortround6
Major General
That would be doubtful even perhaps possible?
It might very well have been true for a certain year or for the theater up until a certain date?
There were about 90 Allison powered F-6 A&B recon planes, and another 90 F-6C (P-51B & C) built. details are not always firm.
They did build/convert around 136 P-51Ds to F-6Ds but that was not until the fall of 1944. The F-6K is too late.
Not at all knowledgeable about what the light/medium bombers were doing or if photos taken on bombing missions for damage assessment count as PR photos.
Deleted member 68059
Staff Sergeant
- 1,058
- Dec 28, 2015
Good question, to be honest I`d say thats at least plausible, but other than that email from the archive saying that the "majority" of USAAF photos were P-38 I have no data.
It seems to be a common pattern for corporate websites to have really bad webpage data for their historic aircraft, the BAE Systems website in the UK had a page for the
Hawker Typhoon, in which they said it was brought in as a ground attack aircraft to replace the Hurricane. I had to email them with copies of the "RAF Type History File", clearly showing it was envisaged as a total replacement for both the Spitfire and Hurricane, it was never supposed to be a ground attack aircraft at all (not when it was being designed).
Hawker Typhoon
Fighter and heavily-armed ground attack aircraft designed around the Napier Sabre engine.
Anyway, they fixed all the things that were wrong, and its now not bad. But I dont think the people making these webpages are historians or specialists, they certainly
were not at BAE systems (however I give them full credit, they replied straight away and DID fix all the errors)
Difficult to say, apart from the dedicated unarmed PR spitfires there were many converted fighters performing a similar role to the Mustangs which generally had a camera too. By October 1942 there were 5 Mosquito PR squadrons. What is impossible to believe is that the total effort by all RAF and USA types that werent P-38s amounted to just 10% of the total. It isnt supported by the history of RAF Medmenham (later Allied Central Interpretation Unit (ACIU)) RAF Medmenham - Wikipedia
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Conslaw
Senior Airman
Especially with the maneuvering flaps and boosted ailerons of the later P-38Ls, the P-38 was a very maneuverable plane in the hands of an expert. An expert could use differential thrust and could induce torque on either side. The workload of flying the plane in an ordinary fashion was hard enough for a low-hour pilot though, and the vast majority of pilots couldn't take advantage of the unique aspects of the plane.
Gentlemen,
In the Mighty Eight War Manual, by Roger Freeman, page 186, Freeman wrote "In late July 1944, the first P-38L's arrived in the UK. … When this model became available for combat units in August, only the 479th Group retained fighter P-38's in 8th Air Force and replacements it received were mostly low-hours P-38J's turned in by the units recently converted to P-51's."
If Freeman is correct (and I have no reason to doubt him) there is no chance the the L model was available for D-Day. IMHO, I would be surprised to find that any of the 8th's Fighter Groups took the L into combat. Corrections always welcomed.
Eagledad
In the Mighty Eight War Manual, by Roger Freeman, page 186, Freeman wrote "In late July 1944, the first P-38L's arrived in the UK. … When this model became available for combat units in August, only the 479th Group retained fighter P-38's in 8th Air Force and replacements it received were mostly low-hours P-38J's turned in by the units recently converted to P-51's."
If Freeman is correct (and I have no reason to doubt him) there is no chance the the L model was available for D-Day. IMHO, I would be surprised to find that any of the 8th's Fighter Groups took the L into combat. Corrections always welcomed.
Eagledad
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