With or without IFF and nose armour?
Most Overrated aircraft of WWII.....?
- Thread starter Lucky13
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All that and a good feed first to maintain the centre of gravity
GrauGeist
Generalfeldmarschall zur Luftschiff Abteilung
The "D" variant of the Bell product had a RoC of 3,750 ft. per minute.
This is with all of it's gear (as manufactured) on board.
SaparotRob
Unter Gemeine Geschwader Murmeltier XIII
With or without heater?
at6
1st Sergeant
GrauGeist
Generalfeldmarschall zur Luftschiff Abteilung
Probably no heater, because if you recall, those pesky Brits messed that whole deal up!
That's all well and good if you can get Saburo and Hirioshi to consent to abandon their bombers, come down from on high, and play your game on your turf. Good luck! Otherwise, you've got to labor your way up to 20,000 feet where the Betties are and your Allison engine is a little short of breath and your smallish symmetrical airfoil wing can't deliver as much G for maneuvering.
Do you have any experience flying low altitude planes at higher altitudes? A normally aspirated (non turbo) Cessna, Piper, or Beechcraft which is a tiger down low wallows like a stuck pig when you get up in the twenties with your nosebags on. But the boss wants to make nonstop max range flights and doesn't mind subjecting us all to oxygen masks for hours on end.
Given your statement above, that chart is not a very accurate predictor of actual combat performance of P39D vs A6M2 over New Guinea, given the circumstances under which most combats occurred.
Over New Guinea it was the other way round, the Coastwatchers gave better early warning for the P-39's than the Zero's had. Not always, but generally the P-39's had the advantage of early warning and height.
That's fine if the Japanese took the coastal route, the long way around. If they chose to come straight over the Owen Stanleys they would have distance, altitude, and surprise on their side. No brainer.
The Japanese tended to prefer high altitude and the direct route to Port Moresby, while US medium bombers leaned towards high speed treetop "surprise" raids, often with circuitous approaches to avoid detection.
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Howard Gibson
Senior Airman
I am working with WWII Aircraft Performance. These are two separate reports. It likely was two different pilots, twiddling switches and levers differently. I don't know how accurate airspeed indicators and altimeters are. It looks like the people testing the Hellcat were not interested in performance above critical altitude. I read somewhere that the supercharger gears on the Packard Merlin Mustangs could be changed to suit tactical requirements. Maybe the gear ratios were different between R-2800s.
I imagine somebody is sitting in a cockpit with a wristwatch and a clipboard, reading gauges and taking notes all while flying the aircraft. The jiggles in the Corsair's curve are not due to supercharger gear changes.
Greg Boeser
1st Sergeant
From my reading, I get the impression that the Japanese were very proficient in the early days, but there was a lingering overconfidence from fighting against very poor opposition in China and the disorganized defense of Malaya and the East Indies. By April 1942, the initial shock had worn off and the US and Australian air forces were beginning to get their feet under them. Even though the early units facing the Japanese had much less experience, they were nevertheless very aggressive in taking the fight to the Japanese. The fact that allied aircraft were armored meant that the allied pilots could make mistakes and live to fight another day. The Japanese were losing exceptional pilots that their training establishment could not replace. The Tainan Kokutai gives a good example of the hubris of the Japanese in that they removed their radios (which didn't work that well anyway,) and voted to not wear parachutes.
wuzak
Captain
The F4U-1 and F6F-3 used essentially the same engine. The main difference was the direction of the carburetor.
In the F4U-1 curve you can see it reaches its critical altitude with auxiliary supercharger in NEUTRAL at about 5,000ft. Performance starts to drop off, then picks up again when the auxiliary supercharger is in LOW gear.
Performance continues to rise until just before 20,000ft, where it reaches critical altitude in LOW gear. Performance again starts to drop off until it is changed to HIGH gear.
Performance increase in HIGH gear until the critical altitude is reached at around 23-24,000ft. After which performance falls off.
This is similar to this F4U-1 speed graph
And an F6F-3 graph
Some of the speed graphs on wwiiperformance.com seem to show the F6F operated in one gear (HIGH) only.
Flight test results obtained by a random line pilot using cockpit flight instruments and a flight test card are not likely to match the same s/n airplane outfitted with recording flight test instrumentation, flown by a professional engineering test pilot, and following the flight test department's standard flight profile. The conditions of the test are as important as the numbers achieved.
Peter Gunn
Master Sergeant
Good that you're not bitter about that...
O.K., back in the '70s, when I was going to Cal Poly, Pomona, I would take a bus from good ol' 'Cow Plopy' down to Holt and Gary to transfer to another one that took me to Riverside, where I was living. Sometimes I would miss the connection, and have to wait an hour or so for the next one. Many times I would go to a delicatessen about 2 or 3 blocks away, but on occasion I'd visit some of the other commercial establishments in the immediate area; one of these was a locally owned gun shop--the owner was a slightly gruff, but generally nice man. One day when I'd stopped there, I saw that he was wearing a camouflage baseball cap with an embroidered image of a P-40 Warhawk on it. I couldn't resist--I asked. Seems he was the crew chief on one of them in the Pacific. Then he said something that took me a few seconds to draw the right conclusion. He told me tht they had shared a strip with a squadron of about 48 P-38s, and while his squadron of about 40 planes could usually put up about 36 for a mission, the '38s were happy if they launched 16 or so; explained that it was the greater reliability of the 'Hawk's engines, and ease of maintenance that maid the difference. After puzzling out that one fora little bit, I realized what the situation had to have been, assuming we were still in the 'No BS Zone. "Oh, you had F's."
"And L's"
Also, the USAF used ab F-82B in its (successful) attempt to set an absolute unrefueled distance record back in the late '40s. Didn't trust the E's Allisons,,,,
drgondog
Major
Certaily not disputing his memory but wonder about linking 'Squadron' mission numbers with his memory. Squadron composition was pretty standard with all AAF units - at 16 composed of 4 flights of four with perhaps some spares at Group force level. I don't have SWP/CBI group histories and have no relevant comment or rebuttal to his comments. Did he confirm 'F' as that makes more sense than J/L's, Additionally co-existance of P-40 Groups with P-38F/G in late1943 than late 1944 and beyond.
Also not sure about comment of reliability between different dash number engines, but understand if he is lumping turbo and oil cooler issues due to much more complicated maintenance.
I knew Bob DeHaven who flew both in combat and had 10 and 4 respectively in P-40/P-38 w/49th G - he liked the P-40 a litte more than P-38 but had no complaints per se about the p-38. Ditto for John Landers who liked the P-38J but Mustang most.
The reliability isssues causing aborts and early RTB even in ETO had largely been ironed out by summer 1944 with full Group staffing of J-15s (not all, sme J-10s soldiered on).
