Love Those P-39 Ads!

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M

MIflyer

1st Lieutenant
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May 30, 2011
Cape Canaveral
I've always loved those WWII Bell P-39 advertisements. They may not have made the best airplanes but they did produce the best ads!
 

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:Like those? Here's more!
 

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Larry Bell was a businessman ... and a showman ... he wanted to give Red P-39 pilots Bell-Zippo lighters but that idea was nixed ... those ads are especially important to the Bell Brand because the Bell product was not well-received by USAAF and RAF pilots but was giving excellent service in the hands of the Reds ... trouble was for Larry the Reds weren't too forthcoming about their successes but were very outspoken about the 'fixes' they wanted/needed, and they were Larry's biggest customer -- maybe 'user' is a more accurate term because the Soviets weren't paying $$$$$, Uncle Sam was the customer ... so ... you advertise.
My source is a biography, the only one I believe, Lawrence Bell Aviation Pioneer, or somesuch
Lawrence Bell Aviation - Google Search
 
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The P-39 Soviet variants that ended up on Guadalcanal more than made their marks as close support/tactical aircraft. From intercepting Japanese troops and supplies exposed in barges and on the beach to stopping the final Japanese attack on the airfield they more than earned proper respect

Not much good for high altitude interception though.

Same over the African desert.
 
Well, there were no "Soviet" versions of the Airacobra. The idea that it was designed as a ground attack airplane and that the USSR used it as a tank buster has been repeated so much that it is something that "everyone knows," but it is completely false. The 37MM gun could not penetrate German tank armor (the RAF confirmed that in tests) and was designed for air-to-air combat, as was the rest of the airplane and that is how the Soviets used it.. The single-stage single-speed supercharger in the V-1710 was set up for a Critical Altitude of 15,000 ft. Tests against the Kiska A6M2 showed that the P-39 outclimbed the Zero up to 10,000 ft, was much faster and accelerated better at both 5,000 and 10,000 ft and climbed about as well as the Zero up to 15,000 ft, after which its performance fell off quite a bit, as you would expect. Even at 25,000 ft, although the Zero accelerated away, the P-39D caught up very quickly.

The F4F's and FM-1's had two stage two speed superchargers and although in terms of streamlining they were inferior to the P-39 (Wildcats and Hellcats even had round head rivets, see attached photo), their engines had Critical Altitudes above 20,000 ft. So at the point where the P-39 started running out of steam the Wildcat was literally going into 2nd gear. Of course the Wildcat was much more maneuverable; even the Zero pilots said it was good in that respect.

The P-400's such as were used on Guadalcanal were Model 14 Airacobras build for the RAF. They had the advantage of a 20MM gun rather than the 37MM, which meant it jammed less often and was more compatible with the .30 cal and .50 cal weapons in terms of trajectory. But the P-400's had a British high pressure oxygen system that was incompatible with Us equipment, so the P-400 pilots flew around gasping for air quite a bit.

One item I uncovered was the impact of the P-39 on the Battle of the Coral Sea. The IJN asked for help from their long range seaplanes in doing recon to find the US fleet. The response they got from their units in the New Guinea area was that they were not in a position to help much. It seems that a few days before the battle Buzz Wagner had led a large force of P-39's to attack Japanese seaplane bases.
 

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"... there were no "Soviet" versions of the Airacobra"
Technically true, but you must acknowledge that Soviets came regularly to Buffalo and on occasion brought along a top P-39 ace .... they requested airframe tail strengthening for example including field mods.
But what really made the P-39 an effective field warplane for the Soviets was the ready supply of replacement Allison engine ... and octane boost additive in some cases. The Soviets got a great deal with Bell because they were his major user and they got his full attention.
 
I forget where it was, which book, but it was not that long ago that an author said something along the lines of, "Designed for tankbusting on the steppes of Russia, the P-39 was not well suited to the demands of the South Pacific."

As I think you would agree, talk about getting it wrong! And I recall it was otherwise a very good book.

As the book on P-39 aces points out, the Soviets not only did not use the Airacobra for tankbusting, they also did not phase it out in favor of more advanced types until after the war was over. If a unit got P-39's they tended to keep them.

But I see no evidence that Bell chose to build low altitude versions of the P-39, despite any Soviet inputs. It would have been easy to change the supercharger impeller and gear ratio to something more like they used on the A-36A. I can only presume that given the feedback you describe the USSR pilots were pleased with its 15,000 ft critical altitude, which seems to have been around 5000 ft higher than that of the Yak-3.

Ironically the French in Indochina loved the P-63, but having given most of them to a different set of Communists, we ran out of them and had to provide the much less satisfactory F6F and F8F as replacements.
 
MIflyer said:
...

Ironically the French in Indochina loved the P-63, but having given most of them to a different set of Communists, we ran out of them and had to provide the much less satisfactory F6F and F8F as replacements.
Click to expand...

Excellent post all-together, bar the quoted part. The French in the Indochina did not liked much F8Fs, let alone P-63s due to small fuel tankage and thus small range. Prefered were F6F and F4U - range, payload, sturdiness.
 

Soviets complained about the weakness of the P-63, not about the P-39. Bell modified the P-63s accordingly.
Soveits got a great at Bell because:
- the aicraft were given basically for free
- it out-performed Soveit-produced fighters handily until mid-44 when Yak-3 and La-7 entered service
- fit, finish and radios were far better than on the Soviet fighters
 
Oh, I recall reading that when the Soviets came to look at some refurbished P-39's that had been used for training in the US they specifically asked if the the rear fuselage reinforcement had been accomplished as part of the overhaul.

I also recall reading where Bud Anderson did an evaluation of a Yak-9 captured in Korea and had a favorable impression of it. Then he had to go on a cross country and got in a P-51H. Looking around at the Mustang cockpit as he taxied out, he realized, "This is a Cadillac compared to that Yak I have been flying."
 

Similar thing was said when ex-Yugoslav tankers switched from T-34s to Shermans in late 1940s/early 1950s: 'from tractor to taxi'.
 
tomo pauk said:
Similar thing was said when ex-Yugoslav tankers switched from T-34s to Shermans in late 1940s/early 1950s: 'from tractor to taxi'.
Click to expand...
Having seen the inside of a British WW1 tank I say nothing. That trapezoidal space you see from the outside has an exposed engine right in the middle which the crew worked their way around.
 
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