The RAF should have kept their Lightning and Cobra contracts but given them to the Kiwis and Aussies for use in the Pacific.

buffnut453 · Sep 11, 2019

Sid327 said:
I believe FDR,

made a decision to concentrate on the European war, to the detriment of the US Forces in The Philppines.
Again I read this somewhere and can't remember the actual book or source. So stand corrected if that's not the case.

SS.

From Wiki...with all the usual caveats:

"At the December 1941 Arcadia Conference between President Franklin Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill in Washington, shortly after the United States entered the War, the decision for the "Europe First" strategy was affirmed. However, U.S. statistics show that the United States devoted more resources in the early part of the war to stopping the advance of Japan, and not until 1944 was a clear preponderance of U.S. resources allocated toward the defeat of Germany."

gumbyk · Sep 11, 2019

Kevin J said:
The Lightning was available in time and without turbochargers working adequately. It had range, firepower, speed and climb superior to the Zero. The Cobra perhaps without the wing guns but with 2 LMG in the lower fuselage would have made a good low altitude anti invasion fighter again with performance superior to the Zero.

How would either of them have been better for the types of operations carried out inthe PTO? I don't think either of them were suitable for ground attack work.

Kevin J · Sep 11, 2019

gumbyk said:
How would either of them have been better for the types of operations carried out inthe PTO? I don't think either of them were suitable for ground attack work.

The P-400 had extra armour. The P-322 range for patrol and recce.

gumbyk · Sep 11, 2019

Kevin J said:
The P-400 had extra armour. The P-322 range for patrol and recce.

Whereas the Corsair had ground attack, air combat, and a (limited) dive-bombing capability, and was obviously still footing it with fighters at the end of the war, given that it was in use for so long afterwards.

Kevin J · Sep 11, 2019

gumbyk said:
Whereas the Corsair had ground attack, air combat, and a (limited) dive-bombing capability, and was obviously still footing it with fighters at the end of the war, given that it was in use for so long afterwards.

Great plane but not available for combat until 1943. So too late to prevent Aus & NZ from being overrun.

Shortround6 · Sep 12, 2019

Kevin J said:
The P-400 had extra armour. The P-322 range for patrol and recce.

What extra armor????

Compared to a P-39C (no armor and no self sealing tanks) the P-400 had extra armor but compared to a late model P-39D did it really have much extra armor?

Please note that the long nose C-15 engines used in the first 322s was good for about 825hp at 20,000ft top speed at 20,000ft may have been around 360mph??? top speed at 5,000ft may have been close to 338mph ????

Kevin J · Sep 12, 2019

Shortround6 said:
What extra armor????

Compared to a P-39C (no armor and no self sealing tanks) the P-400 had extra armor but compared to a late model P-39D did it really have much extra armor?

Please note that the long nose C-15 engines used in the first 322s was good for about 825hp at 20,000ft top speed at 20,000ft may have been around 360mph??? top speed at 5,000ft may have been close to 338mph ????

P-400 extra armour discussed in another thread, perhaps P-39Expert can help here. As for the 322 performance, it's the range which would be useful in the SW Pacific. Your top speed quoted would be more than adequate in 1942.

Ryewit · Sep 12, 2019

The Philippines was already doomed two days before Germany declared war on the US, and its fate sealed by April 9. The P-39 was not much use in the Islands at that point. On the other hand, the P-39 was invaluable at Guadalcanal, and taken from production intended for the RAF.

Dan Fahey · Sep 12, 2019

wuzak said:
Didn't the USAAF take-over the bulk of the RAF order for the Lightning (most of which were to be the Lightning II with turbo)?

YEAH the Brits were upset about the Buffeting problems and other issues with P38 at the point of a legal and political battle.
Pearl Harbor attack changed everything and the US took back the P38s.

Want to mention about Charles Lindbergh's impact on the P38.
He managed as a Civilian to fly combat missions in the Solomon Islands and New Guinea flying with the Marines using the F4u.
Then got himself transferred to the 475th and supposed to fly just escort missions with the P38 squadrons.
Lindbergh probably had more multi/twin engine time than all the other pilots put together.
In fact he climbed in a P38, started flying, flew a lot more than escort missions, which was the advertised intent.
Depending on the books was credited with two Kills, some say just one.

He was most instrumental sorting out the Turbo Alison engines reliability issues.
Original purpose was to improve range by running the turbo engines in lean condition.
It worked very well improving range a lot.
However had another more important benefit, improving engine life.
This also sped up process changing from cruise to combat settings without blowing up the engine or turbo.

Lindbergh had a lot of multi engine experience and provided advice how to fly them.
His impact was subtle but huge.
When war started there was no clear process of training and average pilots to fly multi/twin engine fighter aircraft.
There were no other twin engine fighters in our inventory to borrow experience from.
Pilots were tossed in some with basic instructions though got better as the war moved along.

The Lightning was a tough plane to sorted out and this was because of training, logistics and fog of war.
Slow updates, combat information getting back to Lockheed, information getting updated back to the field.
Cold and damp climate of Europe took 4 years to sort out and then only with the advent of the L model.

Here is a good link on the P38 in Europe
https://www.historynet.com/p-38-flunked-europe.htm

Enjoy

Sid327 · Sep 12, 2019

Can somebody help me out here.

It's concerning what happened after the invasion of The Phillipines:
I read somewhere about US Marines (or Army, or both) managed to escape from the Islands in boats and made it as far as Indochina, where they thought they'd be safe. But the (Vichy) French decided to hand them over to the Japanese.
This apparently was responsible for fostering a lot of bad feelings (in the military) at the time which subsequently seems to have become something a lot of Brits and Americans share in common.

No disrespects to the French, or France. It's a lovely country. But would like to know if this is just a ''war story" or not.

himart · Sep 12, 2019

Kevin J said:
The Lightning was available in time and without turbochargers working adequately. It had range, firepower, speed and climb superior to the Zero. The Cobra perhaps without the wing guns but with 2 LMG in the lower fuselage would have made a good low altitude anti invasion fighter again with performance superior to the Zero.

At the start of US entering WW2 FDR created the War Production Board which determined how materials and products were alocated. For example, Superchargers were in short supply due shortage of specialty steel, so the WPB determined bombers had priority for them. So early fighter aircraft did not get them.

buffnut453 · Sep 12, 2019

Sid327 said:
Can somebody help me out here.

It's concerning what happened after the invasion of The Phillipines:
I read somewhere about US Marines (or Army, or both) managed to escape from the Islands in boats and made it as far as Indochina, where they thought they'd be safe. But the (Vichy) French decided to hand them over to the Japanese.
This apparently was responsible for fostering a lot of bad feelings (in the military) at the time which subsequently seems to have become something a lot of Brits and Americans share in common.

No disrespects to the French, or France. It's a lovely country. But would like to know if this is just a ''war story" or not.

Indochina had been in Japanese hands for several months by the time the Philippines fell. The French in Indochina had no means to resist the Japanese so the latter simply took over. At first they sent "peacekeepers" to separate Thai and French forces who were fighting over a border dispute. That led to a Japanese maintained buffer region, which resulted in Japan occupying military bases and airfields in northern Indochina in September 1940. By the end of July 1941, Japan held the entire country.

ODonovan · Sep 12, 2019

buffnut453 said:
However, U.S. statistics show that the United States devoted more resources in the early part of the war to stopping the advance of Japan, and not until 1944 was a clear preponderance of U.S. resources allocated toward the defeat of Germany."

It would have been difficult to do otherwise. We had major naval battles and a "hot" ground war in the Pacific, while Germany never had much of a naval presence and we had troops just sitting in England, waiting for the invasion which didn't come until...well...1944.

-Irish

Shortround6 · Sep 12, 2019

himart said:
At the start of US entering WW2 FDR created the War Production Board which determined how materials and products were alocated. For example, Superchargers were in short supply due shortage of specialty steel, so the WPB determined bombers had priority for them. So early fighter aircraft did not get them.

Not sure where this comes from.

The XP-39 had a really bad turbo supercharger installation that caused a tremendous amount of drag and the intercooler installation was so bad that hoped for increased power from the the wasn't going to happen. And BTW there were plenty of superchargers, every US aircraft engine much over 400hp had one. It was turbochargers that might have been in short supply, more later.
The XP-39 had the turbo taken out and the plane redesigned to use a simple single stage supercharger (which the XP-39 already had) well before the War Production Board ever existed.

SO let's look at this.

P-38s all used turbos except for the 143 ordered by the French and British (a 2nd order of aircraft was to get them)
P-39, no turbo for reasons given above
P-40, never intended to use a turbo.
XP-41, one prototype, modified P-35 with an early two stage engine similar to the one used in the F4F WIldcat.
XP-42, a P-36 with extended nose for better streamlining, They couldn't cool the non-turbo engine well enough (plus propshaft vibration) so they gave up on that idea.
P-43, modified P-35 with turbo.
XP-44, Modified P-43 with slightly larger engine, also with turbo, killed on the drawing board.
P-45, production version of the YP-39, redesignated the P-39C. no turbo, order for 80 placed Aug 19th 1939
P-46, replacement for the P-40 long nose, never had a turbo planned for it.
P-47, replacement for the P-43/P-44. always had a turbo since the contract changed to the P&W powered version.
That should cover just about all the US Army early war fighters.

SO just how did any supposed restrictions by the War Production Board which was established in Jan of 1942 affect the early US fighters?
The War production board had been preceded by the "Office of production Management" but that was only established in Jan of 1941 and had little to do with the design of aircraft or allocation of Turbo superchargers.
The Office of Production Management had taken over for the Priorities Board.

Many early planes that used turbo superchargers had a lot of trouble with them, especially fighters. This was due to a bad design of turbo control/regulator. large bombers climb and lose altitude slowly and were less likely to both overspeed the turbos and suffer from freezing of the turbo control/waste gate control. They also had a flight engineer to monitor the engine and exhaust temperatures more closely than a fighter pilot could.

The Navy's only interest in turbos was to monitor the situation and so not be left behind should the turbo turn out to be something the navy needed. They never ordered more than experimental quantities of any aircraft with turbochargers.

Reluctant Poster · Sep 13, 2019

Dan Fahey said:
YEAH the Brits were upset about the Buffeting problems and other issues with P38 at the point of a legal and political battle.
Pearl Harbor attack changed everything and the US took back the P38s.

Want to mention about Charles Lindbergh's impact on the P38.
He managed as a Civilian to fly combat missions in the Solomon Islands and New Guinea flying with the Marines using the F4u.
Then got himself transferred to the 475th and supposed to fly just escort missions with the P38 squadrons.
Lindbergh probably had more multi/twin engine time than all the other pilots put together.
In fact he climbed in a P38, started flying, flew a lot more than escort missions, which was the advertised intent.
Depending on the books was credited with two Kills, some say just one.

He was most instrumental sorting out the Turbo Alison engines reliability issues.
Original purpose was to improve range by running the turbo engines in lean condition.
It worked very well improving range a lot.
However had another more important benefit, improving engine life.
This also sped up process changing from cruise to combat settings without blowing up the engine or turbo.

Lindbergh had a lot of multi engine experience and provided advice how to fly them.
His impact was subtle but huge.
When war started there was no clear process of training and average pilots to fly multi/twin engine fighter aircraft.
There were no other twin engine fighters in our inventory to borrow experience from.
Pilots were tossed in some with basic instructions though got better as the war moved along.

The Lightning was a tough plane to sorted out and this was because of training, logistics and fog of war.
Slow updates, combat information getting back to Lockheed, information getting updated back to the field.
Cold and damp climate of Europe took 4 years to sort out and then only with the advent of the L model.

Here is a good link on the P38 in Europe
https://www.historynet.com/p-38-flunked-europe.htm

Enjoy

Lindbergh supposed huge impact didn't occur until July 1944 when he actually flew in the Pacific. The claim that he solved the problems of the P38 is grossly exaggerated. It came about after the war to salvage his reputation which had suffered greatly from his associations with Herman Goring etc.
July 1944 is too late to have any significant impact on P 38 operations in Europe.
His infamous Des Moines speech:
This week in history: Lindbergh gives infamous 'Who are the war agitators?' speech

Reluctant Poster · Sep 13, 2019

Shortround6 said:
Not sure where this comes from.

The XP-39 had a really bad turbo supercharger installation that caused a tremendous amount of drag and the intercooler installation was so bad that hoped for increased power from the the wasn't going to happen. And BTW there were plenty of superchargers, every US aircraft engine much over 400hp had one. It was turbochargers that might have been in short supply, more later.
The XP-39 had the turbo taken out and the plane redesigned to use a simple single stage supercharger (which the XP-39 already had) well before the War Production Board ever existed.

SO let's look at this.

P-38s all used turbos except for the 143 ordered by the French and British (a 2nd order of aircraft was to get them)
P-39, no turbo for reasons given above
P-40, never intended to use a turbo.
XP-41, one prototype, modified P-35 with an early two stage engine similar to the one used in the F4F WIldcat.
XP-42, a P-36 with extended nose for better streamlining, They couldn't cool the non-turbo engine well enough (plus propshaft vibration) so they gave up on that idea.
P-43, modified P-35 with turbo.
XP-44, Modified P-43 with slightly larger engine, also with turbo, killed on the drawing board.
P-45, production version of the YP-39, redesignated the P-39C. no turbo, order for 80 placed Aug 19th 1939
P-46, replacement for the P-40 long nose, never had a turbo planned for it.
P-47, replacement for the P-43/P-44. always had a turbo since the contract changed to the P&W powered version.
That should cover just about all the US Army early war fighters.

SO just how did any supposed restrictions by the War Production Board which was established in Jan of 1942 affect the early US fighters?
The War production board had been preceded by the "Office of production Management" but that was only established in Jan of 1941 and had little to do with the design of aircraft or allocation of Turbo superchargers.
The Office of Production Management had taken over for the Priorities Board.

Many early planes that used turbo superchargers had a lot of trouble with them, especially fighters. This was due to a bad design of turbo control/regulator. large bombers climb and lose altitude slowly and were less likely to both overspeed the turbos and suffer from freezing of the turbo control/waste gate control. They also had a flight engineer to monitor the engine and exhaust temperatures more closely than a fighter pilot could.

The Navy's only interest in turbos was to monitor the situation and so not be left behind should the turbo turn out to be something the navy needed. They never ordered more than experimental quantities of any aircraft with turbochargers.

" The Development of Aircraft Engines Appendix to Chapter XVII" has a detailed discussion of the metallurgical problems with GEs turbochargers. GE was unable to produce turbochargers in large quantities until a castable form of Stellite (originally produced for dentures!) was discovered to be a suitable material for turbine blades.

Macandy · Sep 13, 2019

Sid327 said:
I believe FDR,

made a decision to concentrate on the European war, to the detriment of the US Forces in The Philppines.
Again I read this somewhere and can't remember the actual book or source. So stand corrected if that's not the case.

SS.

The Japanese were a regional threat, the Germans a global strategic threat.
Using just 10% of its resources, the US was able to hold and drive back the Japanese.
Once the war in Europe ended and the USA was able to devote unlimited resources to the Pacific, they quickly crushed Japan.

Kevin J · Sep 13, 2019

Macandy said:
The Japanese were a regional threat, the Germans a global strategic threat.
Using just 10% of its resources, the US was able to hold and drive back the Japanese.
Once the war in Europe ended and the USA was able to devote unlimited resources to the Pacific, they quickly crushed Japan.

As far as I can see, the war in the Pacific was primarily a Navy and Marine Corps affair. The Italians reckoned that every carrier cost the equivalent of 1000 fighters. Us Brits dealt with the main naval effort in the Atlantic, and Indian oceans, leaving the Americans free to concentrate in the Pacific. The Americans had 114 carriers in WW2 which except for a dozen of so Bogue class escort carriers permanently operating in the mid Atlantic left about 100 to operate in the Pacific. That is a lot of expensive kit you're talking about. Yes, Ranger and Wasp made temporary forays into the North Atlantic, and a handful of other escort carriers made forays into the Mediterranean for Operation Torch and the invasion of Southern France, but that was it. To me, it looks like the Americans assigned one third of their resources to the Pacific overall, but most of their carrier fleet.

Shortround6 · Sep 13, 2019

Reluctant Poster said:
" The Development of Aircraft Engines Appendix to Chapter XVII" has a detailed discussion of the metallurgical problems with GEs turbochargers. GE was unable to produce turbochargers in large quantities until a castable form of Stellite (originally produced for dentures!) was discovered to be a suitable material for turbine blades.

That is true but to blame the war production board which didn't exist until Jan 1942 or it's predecessor which didn't exist until Jan 1941 or even it's predecessor/s for design decisions made in 1938, 1939 and 1940 seems to require a time machine. P-47 was approved and ordered in 1940 with turbo.

Turbos were not something that could be added to a fighter plane at a later date, the plane was either designed to accommodate a turbo or it wasn't.

In early 1940 the turbo was not approved for export which is one reason the French and early British P322s weren't ordered with them. As France fell and the situation for Britain got more desperate the restrictions on the export of technology fell and and Britain was allowed to order over 500 P-38s with turbos in the summer of 1940.

Now if somebody can come up with a a memo or letter or directive stating that plane X should be built without turbos in order to save the turbos for bombers or anything close to that I will be happy to admit I am wrong.

Shortround6 · Sep 13, 2019

Reluctant Poster said:
Lindbergh supposed huge impact didn't occur until July 1944 when he actually flew in the Pacific. The claim that he solved the problems of the P38 is grossly exaggerated. It came about after the war to salvage his reputation which had suffered greatly from his associations with Herman Goring etc.
July 1944 is too late to have any significant impact on P 38 operations in Europe.

The Army was operating the P-38 in direct conflict with the way that both Allison and Lockheed said it should be flown. Both companies recommended that for cruising low rpm and high boost should be used (and run in lean condition) however the army was running them at high rpm and low boost in order to have faster response if bounced (they thought).
In actual fact it took awhile for the turbos to spin up to combat rpm and running at low boost, even if the engine was at high rpm meant the turbos were running at near idle.
Power response from low rpm, high boost with a constant speed prop was certainly no worse than the reverse.
It took Lindbergh in the Pacific and Tony Levier in Europe to convince the squadron pilots to fly the planes the way the manuals said to fly them.

The RAF should have kept their Lightning and Cobra contracts but given them to the Kiwis and Aussies for use in the Pacific.

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