...searching for the best USAAF interceptor...

syscom3 · Jul 10, 2006

The P38's were hard to maintain because their origional design reflected a production rate of less than a hundred planes. Since Lockheed had no expectation that it would be a mass produced airplane, they were essentially designed to be hand built.

The stories about the P38 being a hard plane to master came from the poor training the pilots received in the fist couple of years of the war. Once the syllabus was perfected, the plane became one of the easyist to fly.

Now of course the pilots in the SW Pacific never thought they were flying in an inferior plane and always loved it.

Jank · Jul 10, 2006

"The stories about the P38 being a hard plane to master came from the poor training the pilots received in the fist couple of years of the war. Once the syllabus was perfected, the plane became one of the easyist to fly."

The Report of Joint Fighter Conference, October 1944 has a contrary position. To be frank, I have seen no other opinions or evaluations on the matter. Perhaps you could point me to a source that states differently.

syscom3 · Jul 10, 2006

Jank said:
"The stories about the P38 being a hard plane to master came from the poor training the pilots received in the fist couple of years of the war. Once the syllabus was perfected, the plane became one of the easyist to fly."

The Report of Joint Fighter Conference, October 1944 has a contrary position. To be frank, I have seen no other opinions or evaluations on the matter. Perhaps you could point me to a source that states differently.

Tony Levier had to fly to the ETO to teach the pilots how to operate the plane with one engine out. Once he showed them how to do it, the issues of how complex the plane was to fly began to fall by the wayside.

The 8th and 9th AF always seemed to have problems with the P38 that the other commands didnt.

At Chino 2004, I had the opportunity to speak to a 475th FG pilot who told me (and the others who stopped to listen in) that the -38 WAS the fighter to have in the PTO, and it was no more tough a plane to master than any other twin engined plane. It was all about training. Once you knew what you were doing, then it all fell into place.

Jank · Jul 10, 2006

"...it was no more tough a plane to master than any other twin engined plane."

Perhaps that explains it. The P-51 isn't a twin engined plane.

To reiterate, I said, "The P-38 was a great aircraft. It was expensive to build and to maintain. It was a plane that was harder to master than a P-51 and the Allies had decided that sheer numbers in the hands of run of the mill mediocre pilots was the strategy of choice."

delcyros · Jul 10, 2006

It seems, that the P-38 was hot in every role it had to fullfill:
Escort, ground attack, interceptions, dogfighting, recon.
Assume the US would have concentrated on the P-38 and no P-47/P-51 would reach maturity. How many P-38 could have been produced instaed of Thuds and Stangs?

syscom3 · Jul 10, 2006

delcyros said:
It seems, that the P-38 was hot in every role it had to fullfill:
Escort, ground attack, interceptions, dogfighting, recon.
Assume the US would have concentrated on the P-38 and no P-47/P-51 would reach maturity. How many P-38 could have been produced instaed of Thuds and Stangs?

I wouldnt say it was a great dog fighter. In 1944, it was just barely able to handle the -109's and -190's. In 1945 it was outclassed by the latest German fighters.

In one of the biggest riddles on American aircraft production in WW2, no one can explain why there was only a single factory for the -38 (I knwo about the Nashville plant, but it came online late in the war and didnt build many).

That being said, if the half dozen or so -51 and -47 plants were converted to the -38..... production could easily top 1000 per month.

Jank · Jul 10, 2006

Delcyros said, "It seems, that the P-38 was hot in every role it had to fullfill:
Escort, ground attack, interceptions, dogfighting, recon."

Perhaps the word "hot" is a bit ambiguous but I would generally agree with your statement, although to be fair, the P-38 was no furball fighter, as indicated by syscom3. I think that the P-38, after the introduction of the "J" model, could alone, generally perform those tasks that the P-51 and P-47 came to excel at separately, namely escort and ground attack.

delcyros · Jul 10, 2006

...after seeing one of the old veterans on a flight meeting at Zurich, I have been very impressed by the sleek lines of the P-38. I admit that I like the design much. It may not have been a furball fighter but it did the job in the Pacific, from the early stage up to wars end against some of the finest furball fighters of ww2. Altough advanced pilot tactics and a better energy management may have contributed a lot to the performance of the P-38 in this theatre.

Tony Williams · Jul 10, 2006

wmaxt said:
? The P-38J in METO power climbed to 15,000ft in 5 min and 25,000ft in 9 min Given that climb rate decreases with altitude the P-38J is under 7 min to 20,000ft. If you check P-38J Performance Test you will find that a P-38J-10 could do it in 5min 37sec, WEP power. They have tests on later marks to.

The figure for the P-63A was 7.3 minutes to 25,000 feet, not 20,000 (source: The American Fighter).

Since both the P-38 and the P-63 used the Allison engine, any souping-up to boost the P-38's performance could have equally been applied to the P-63 if required, but the USAAF didn't need a high-altitude interceptor.

Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website and discussion forum

pbfoot · Jul 10, 2006

I agree with you the p63 could really climb and its armament looked potent

Tony Williams · Jul 10, 2006

Jank said:
I think that the P-38, after the introduction of the "J" model, could alone, generally perform those tasks that the P-51 and P-47 came to excel at separately, namely escort and ground attack.

I disagree over the ground attack - those liquid-cooled engines were a lot more vulnerable to ground fire than air-cooled ones. And the P-38 was expensive compared with single-engined planes, so you really didn't want to lose them (ground attack was expensive in plane losses):

P-51D = $54,000
P-47D = $85,000
P-38L = $115,000

(source: USAF Museum World War II aircraft )

Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website and discussion forum

syscom3 · Jul 10, 2006

The P63 had two disadvantages. Limited endurance and its dangerous stall charchteristics.

Plus the P38 could be pressed into doing other roles, which the P63 couldnt do.

syscom3 · Jul 10, 2006

What made the P38 so great for ground attack was its bomb load capability and the centrally located MG's. The -47 had more of them, but the convergence issues meant there was only a short time for all of them to be used with deadly effect.

pbfoot · Jul 10, 2006

The P63 was quick enough to altitude as to compliment any available radar of the time and this is a discussion of interceptors range is not a factor so I've been told by many others on this forum as a prerequisite of an interceptor and it was single engined which leads to a lot less snags or aborts

Tony Williams · Jul 10, 2006

syscom3 said:
What made the P38 so great for ground attack was its bomb load capability and the centrally located MG's. The -47 had more of them, but the convergence issues meant there was only a short time for all of them to be used with deadly effect.

I really don't think that convergence was much of an issue in ground attack - if you look at gun camera footage of strafing runs (especially against ships, where you can see the bullet splashes) you can see that only a small percentage of the shots hit the target - a spread of fire was probably quite useful to make sure they hit their targets.

It's not as if any of the US planes carried powerful anti-tank guns which needed to hit small targets...

Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website and discussion forum

syscom3 · Jul 10, 2006

pbfoot said:
The P63 was quick enough to altitude as to compliment any available radar of the time and this is a discussion of interceptors range is not a factor so I've been told by many others on this forum as a prerequisite of an interceptor and it was single engined which leads to a lot less snags or aborts

Endurance counts. Long loiter times means multiple attack or reattck times. Plus you can get into position and your squadron/group formed up long before the enemy is in range instead of performing a last second scramble to get airborne.

Jank · Jul 10, 2006

Syscom said, "What made the P38 so great for ground attack was its bomb load capability and the centrally located MG's. The -47 had more of them, but the convergence issues meant there was only a short time for all of them to be used with deadly effect."

Agreed but I don't see too much downside of the Thunderbolt's 8 x .50's either.

Tony has a good point about the survivability of in-line engines. Even having two is not necessarily an advantage over a single round engine.

From Report of Joint Fighter Conference at pg. 86-87:

Lieutenant GAVIN: "In connection with this discussion by the aircraft manufacturers, on the preference of an engine, I think it would be interesting if we could have a comment from some of the Army people here as to the relative vulnerability of the liquid-cooled and air-cooled installations based on their experience in Eurpoe.

Colonel GARMAN: "I can speak only for the African theatre and for only a particular type of operation. The P-38 was used at low level on many occasions and we found that it was quite vulnerable to ground fire - any type of ground fire, even small-arms fire. But other airplanes also experienced that same ground fire and the radial engines brought the planes home. You can't lay down any hard and fast rule and say the in-line is no good at low altitude as far as ground fire is concerned. It all depends on the operation entirely.

Lieutenant Colonel TYLER: "We have data which shows that in the entire European theatre the P-47 is much better able to take punishment and return after any sort of mission - either ground attack or any mission that incurs damage. That may be due to the P-47 airplane or due to the air-cooled feature. We don't know which, but it certainly can take it better than the other types.

Tony Williams · Jul 11, 2006

syscom3 said:
Endurance counts. Long loiter times means multiple attack or reattck times. Plus you can get into position and your squadron/group formed up long before the enemy is in range instead of performing a last second scramble to get airborne.

Of course long endurance is always an advantage, even for an interceptor, provided that it doesn't compromise rate of climb, speed and agility (it is unwise to assume that the attacking bomber fleets will never face escort fighters - the Luftwaffe got a rude shock over that...). The problem is that carrying loads of fuel does affect those characteristics.

The pros and cons are rather dependent on the circumstances. I've noticed that the USA is a rather large place, and to provide a comprehensive fighter defence of all of it with 1940s technology would have required an enormous number of aircraft, pilots and air bases. So it would appear more sensible to focus on the bits that you need to protect - cities, ports, bases - and base interceptors close to them. In that case, they don't need a long endurance.

That situation is not very different from that faced by the UK in the BoB. The short-range Spitfire and Hurricane were as likely to run out of ammo as fuel.

Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website and discussion forum

syscom3 · Jul 11, 2006

Tony Williams said:
......The pros and cons are rather dependent on the circumstances. I've noticed that the USA is a rather large place, and to provide a comprehensive fighter defence of all of it with 1940s technology would have required an enormous number of aircraft, pilots and air bases. So it would appear more sensible to focus on the bits that you need to protect - cities, ports, bases - and base interceptors close to them. In that case, they don't need a long endurance.

Interesting you brought that up. I wonder if the AAF preferred a slight tradeoff of agility for better range. Although if I remember correctly, the use of drop tanks for the fighters was actively discouraged so as not to interfere with the unescorted long range bomber doctrine.

Sal Monella · Jul 11, 2006

The P-38's my favorite plane. I know I read of concerns about it being a complicated plane to fly and maintain. ALso, serious visibility issues.

I wonder if they could have put four 20 milimeter cannons in the nose. That would have been sweet.

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