The p38 and docile handling charachteristics or lack thereof.

[Conslaw]

Hi Shortround,

I am certainly not saying you are wrong, and your information makes a lot of sense. However, I was NOT there, and am relying on recollections from P-38 pilots who flew them in combat some 75 - 76 years ago. They mention issues with the P-38 that we KNOW were later traced to fuel. None of them mentioned aromatics, just the issues that we now know were caused by wrong jetting from the factory and possibly aromatics. A couple referred to their Allisons as the "Allison Time Bomb." I surmise they had to be early pilots because once the issues were fixed, the Allison gave good service. Since they didn't have that recollection and were ETO pilots, I surmise the issues they described were almost all related to fuel, intake manifolds, and the like in early P-38s. All recalled the cold and bad heaters. Several said their "combat training" was done flying operational missions. I surmise they had little formal combat training.

So, yes, I could be off in left field. But here's the thing. I spent 34 years as an electrical engineer listening in meetings and coming up with a problem statement from listening in meetings, among other tasks. I would then take the problem statement back to the next meeting to be sure I understood what they were trying to say before starting to work on it. Most of the time, after my early days, I was pretty well on target.

In this case, I don't have the luxury of seeing the same P-38 pilots and asking them if my estimate of their issues seems accurate because they are very old guys who rarely come back even a year later. When they DO (if they do), we volunteers don't get most of the questions for the panels. We let the paying public ask the questions.

Could I be wrong? Definitely. But the issues they talked about are decently well known, including dive flaps, fuel, coldness in the cockpit, and low limiting Mach number (wasn't called that back then).

So, I cannot go out and ask them specific questions and I don't claim your information is in error, either. I'm trying my best to reconcile both and come up with a likely explanation. Most of technical discussions in here are, for me, kind of like that ... Go look into things when time allows and see if the items discussed seem to meet the realities I can find, knowing full well that an exact problem description in any particular discussion, may or may not EVER surface in ANY reference.

It's sort of like trying to find out the real top speed of, say, an F6F-5 Hellcat. I can find speeds anywhere from 365 to 415 mph and I can find articles by Corky Meyer that say the Corsair and Hellcat would fly side by side at the same power settings. By the way, that has been confirmed by several pilots who fly around with both types these days. What is the real answer? I STILL don't know for sure, but my best guess is somewhere around 380 - 390 mph, with the Corsair having a slightly optimistic airspeed indicator ... but it SHOULD be slightly faster at the top end due to ram air effect that the Hellcat did not have.

With me, these questions are not an exact science due to lack of exact descriptions of issues we talk over in here that are actually covered in references. I hope you understand.

Cheers.

If the top speed of Hellcat is 380 and Corsair is 400, that 20 MPH difference is 5%. If there is really a 10 MPH difference, that's only a 2.5% difference. Individual aircraft of the same type within a squadron might have that much difference. That might be hard to quantify under combat conditions. I really question Corky's claim of a Hellcat airspeed indicator systematically indicating 20 MPH low though. Reason: These planes were constantly used for dead reckoning over the ocean on multiple hour missions. If your airspeed indicator is off 20 MPH, a lot of time you won't make it back to your ship.