Twin P-40 (1 Viewer)

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I think the view in the front would be pretty bad considering how much the engine's stick out. But yet than again, the P-38 had the same thing, and they did pretty well.
 


The large nacelles look as if they're well-suited for carrying large amounts of fuel

I wonder if there is any connection between the twin P-40 and the XP-71? Curtiss would have produced both mock-ups around the same time and in attempting to meet a long range escort fighter specification, is it possible that the twin P-40 was a cheaper alternative for the USAAF to consider?

 
What on earth gave them the idea to attach the engines ABOVE the wings, instead for under them?

Looking at the pic, it might have been to do with ensuring adequate ground clearance for the prop tips?

More importantly (and I've just thought of this as I type!), it looks as if putting the nacelles under the wings would have caused problems with the undercarriage - I am fairly sure they would have got in the way.
 
...the P-38 had the same thing, and they did pretty well.
It didn't
not even close, really. Compared to that contraption, the view from the P-38 was enviable; his eyeline was well above the nacelles for a start. There are a few reasons why the P-38 'did pretty well' and the fact that the pilot could see most of what was going on is almost certainly one of them.
With the twin P-40 I get the impression you could see where you were headed, you could see where you'd been (in your mirror) and anything at greater altitude than you - which might not be very helpful in a P-40, twin or otherwise, if it was still without a supercharger arrangement.

It never flew but those 'walls' either side must have presented some weird sensory effects on the pilot, deprived of most of the sensation of motion - the pilots in here, would that be the case?

An interesting diversion but it's not really difficult to see why not many people knew of its existence, it was never going to see service or even prototype stage in that form.
 
I reckon it would have been extremmely fast - vertically downwards to impact!
I've just realised how it came about - it was an April Fool's stunt by a disgruntled Curtiss employee!!
 
I dunno, maybe she was just a "proof_of_concept" for a new design... perhaps a competitor to lockheed's p-38. Or maybe she was a conceptual start-up, from there changes would have been done to make things right. Remember that designing during tis period was really straight forward. Instead of spending hundred's of man hours infront of drawing tables, they decided to build a p-40 with two engines, test it and start adding or substracting until something good came out of it... perhaps in just a few test flights enough feedback from the test pilots would have been enough to modify the prototype and build the new one.
 

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