On big American fighters

[tomo pauk]

Depends on the aircraft, some were ordered in quantity before the prototype flew. There was 733 P-47B and P-47C on order on Sept 1940, the XP-47B 1st rolled out on May 1941. The B-26 was ordered from the drawing board.
For many aircraft, the 'Y' small series was ordered once the 1st prototype was deemed as satisfactory aircraft. IIRC the USAAF was allowed for up to 13 such aircraft before asking Congress for money.

 

[FLYBOYJ]

Was it common to have just one prototype?

It depended on the contract.

Remember folks - no one at Lockheed ever expected the P-38 to be mass produced. People I worked with 30 years ago who were around during P-38 development were surprised when the 12 YP-38s were ordered after the XP-38 crashed, and even then I remember at least one former co-worker saying that he thought there would never be more than 50 P-38s built.

 

[kool kitty89]

Again, several things need to happen for more/debugged P-38s: having a second source of production; not crashing the XP-38 (at least not that early); USAAF contracts Lockheed for more pre-series examples earlier.

Without the second source and planning in place for mass production sooner, the non-turbocharged version is a bit of a non-starter too. (volumes aren't going to be possible to the point of matching or exceeding 50% of the production capacity of the P-40 or P-39 in 1941-43, let alone supplanting both of those)

For that matter, without more aggressive/accelerated prototype development, there wouldn't have even been the engineering capacity to allow optimizations to be made for a non-turbocharged variant without slowing down development of the main version.

Was it common to have just one prototype?

Depends on the aircraft, some were ordered in quantity before the prototype flew. There was 733 P-47B and P-47C on order on Sept 1940, the XP-47B 1st rolled out on May 1941. The B-26 was ordered from the drawing board.
For many aircraft, the 'Y' small series was ordered once the 1st prototype was deemed as satisfactory aircraft. IIRC the USAAF was allowed for up to 13 such aircraft before asking Congress for money.

The P-38 program is also hardly the only one to have the bad luck of the prototype crashing. The XP-63 had the particularly bad luck of having both of the first two prototypes crashing for different reasons fairly early on.

Remember folks - no one at Lockheed ever expected the P-38 to be mass produced. People I worked with 30 years ago who were around during P-38 development were surprised when the 12 YP-38s were ordered after the XP-38 crashed, and even then I remember at least one former co-worker saying that he thought there would never be more than 50 P-38s built.

I'd actually forgotten about this, but now I'm recalling that this line of thinking also hampered shift to mass production due not only to the delay in acquiring manufacturing tooling and facilities for efficient mass production, but due to the initial design itself not being optimized for mass production. (and the XP-38 itself being constructed fairly differently from the YP-38s or production models)

 

[FLYBOYJ]

I'd actually forgotten about this, but now I'm recalling that this line of thinking also hampered shift to mass production due not only to the delay in acquiring manufacturing tooling and facilities for efficient mass production, but due to the initial design itself not being optimized for mass production. (and the XP-38 itself being constructed fairly differently from the YP-38s or production models)

The XP-38 was basically "hand built". Lockheed was in the middle of expanding its Burbank facility when the YP-38 contract was awarded. Even into early P-38 production, some of the final assembly was done outside.

 

[BiffF15]

Flyboy,

I really like that first shot, very smooth indeed! It looks very similar to the RedBull P-38. It really needed a true "blown" canopy and the K model...

Cheers,
Biff

 

[Shortround6]

Better to be working outside in Burbank than outside in Buffalo NY in the winter

 

[gjs238]

That metal is precious!
(hmmm, where have I heard that before?)

 

[FLYBOYJ]

I am very proud to say that I worked there and was actually inside some of those buildings.