delcyros
Tech Sergeant
Not only the sound! Everytime I get a look to this plane I get fascinated by it´s lines. It´s a real beauty.
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Gentlemen,
all good points brought up here - but common denominator missing here is the ability to fly a twin engine aircraft. It did take an exceptional pilot to make the P-38 perform to its fullest and many of those same pilots mastered the idiosyncricies found in twins. As I stated many times before a twin engine aircraft could be handful for the careless or untrained, especially during an engine out on take off. Those who are novices or untrained may find themselves a black hole just by virtue of operating the aircraft and this situation exists even today.
Some of the top P-38 drivers in the PTO had a lot of multi engine time and usually flew other multi engine aircraft just to stay proficient.
Hunter is correct - it doesn't sound very glorious, but in fact the war in
Europe and the Pacific was decided when America's avalanche of productivity
came into play. The Luftwaffe died of attrition, for every Allied aircraft they
dispatched, two more filled the air space. And American shipyards built more
ships in one month than Japan built in the 4 years after Pearl. (The Japanese
were already rationing everything before they attacked Pearl Harbor - the
war in China and American embargoes had already tightened the noose).
Still, that takes all the fun out of the discussion now, doesn't it?
Older and sentimental I am now, there is no sound like the P-38, and her size
gives her a grace doing aerobatics that isn't matched by single engine
fighters. I haven't played any simulation games, but I need to so I can
understand a lot of what I am reading here! (Still, for air to air combat,
the P-38 would not be my first choice unless I had a very long distance
mission to fly.)
and there will be plenty more people that have nothing good to say about the aircraft..............
and i'm with Hunter RE the pilot skill, few pilots had the skill to use her.........
Of course you need to take into account the skill of the pilot but then in the engagement of the above quote he was inexperianced enough to forget to switch fuel tanks and later to dive from over 25,000ft into compressability.
You are also right in that an inexperianced pilot in a P-38 was not going to do well. A common complaint in the ETO was pilots from single engine fighters given 20 hours to familurise themselves with the P-38 before combat. Not fair of effective!
A complant of every pilot from the PTO to the ETO is that the P-38 were not being trained or operated properly.
It was more complicated, the early ones had some pretty big issues, it did take a better trained pilot.
wmaxt
Good points. And your right they sound cool.
But I think I'd go for the 38 in air to air combat. A lot of pilots who flew it prefered it. A sad point is that the pilots that went to the ETO comment about how badly it was being operated there.
It's also true that a less performing plane with greater numbers did the job but I have to ask was it really worth it?
In the 8th AF the P-51 flew just less than twice the sorties and lost 5 times the aircraft and pilots. P-38, 451 - P-51, 2,201 Source AAF archives via 8th Air Force Combat Losses in World War II ETO Against the AXIS Powers . The P-51 flew 214,000 sorties in the ETO the P-38 flew about 130,000 and ~30,000 of each were in the 9th/15th AF's The P-38 also flew a much higher percentage of G/A sorties than the P-51.
In '44 the P-51 cost ~$51,000 and the P-38 cost ~$97,000 and P-47, ~$85,500plus pilots of course.
Lastly the statistics indicate that the vast majority of kills are made by the top 5-7% of the pilots. Of course thats an entirely different thing that effective escort where a fighters presence is often all thats needed.
Just some thoughts.
wmaxt
For some reason P-38 apologists have trouble with statistics. The sortie rates quoted are for the combined ETO and MTO, the loss rates are for the ETO only. The actual losses for the combined ETO and MTO are P-38 - 1758, P-51 – 2520. The loss rate for the P-38 was HIGHER than for the P-51 (1.35% vs 1.18%)
In '44 the P-51 cost ~$51,000 and the P-38 cost ~$97,000
well that's what it comes down to, you can buy two P-51s for 1 P-38, the P-51 is able to deal with most fighters sufficiently, they're easier to maintain, easier to fly, have comparable range and, whilst she does have some ground attack ability there were plenty of aircraft in the ETO that were better than the P-51 and P-38 in the ground attack role (yes such planes do exist wmaxt), for the ETO the P-38 offers few advantages over any other fighter out there.............
BTW, if you are old enough to remember the fins on the automobiles in the
1950's, they originated with the chief designer at General Motors who also
loved how the P-38 looked, and modeled fins on his car designs in tribute.