Which is the better fighter, P-40F or Typhoon?

P-40 or Typhoon

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Schweik said:
The Typhoon had basically the worst roll rate of any modern Allied fighter, and one of the worst turn rates for any single engined Allied fighter. It was fast but not very maneuverable.
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Where is your evidence for this? All you have posted is the infamous NACA roll rate, chart which apparently is all calculated. If you read some of these posts more thoroughly, you would of read that there is a difference between roll rate and time to bank. Time to bank is more important in ACM. I have posted data form A&AEE testing stating that the Kittyhawks aerlerons were set solid at 460 IAS , while the Typhoon is still able to roll from level to 45 degrees left and back to 45 degrees right in 5.75 seconds while applying just 1/4 aerleron at 460 IAS. In mock combat with a Spit V , the Typhoon can match the Spit in instantaneous turn ability. The Typhoon was also able to defeat the Spit V , by using its superior speed and dive ect, to extend and gain the advantage whenever necessary. The Typhoon also has a far better power loading than the P-40 F, a combat ready early Typhoon 1b comes in at 11,040 lbs, with the saber engine making 2180 hp in Sept of 42 giving a power loading of 5.06 lbs/ hp, the P-40 F comes in at 8,910 lbs and a Merlin XX at 1,300 hp giving a power loading of 6.85 lbs /hp. Test pilot Sammy Wroath praised the Typhoon for its" light and well harmonized controls".
 

The pilots direct quote was ""if the rudder trim goes on a Typhoon, you have no chance."

The turn rate and roll rate figures for the Typhoon were not invented or initially posted by me, nor does climb rate equate to turn rate. To be honest I had no idea what those figures would be when I started this thread but it looks like the Typhoon was a bit of a buffalo.

This report notes "severe vibration of the airframe is apparent in steep turns over 4G" and mentions trying to do a 4G turn to the left (harder than the right due to torque) which resulted in a snap-roll and a loss of 2,000 ft of altitude. In WW2 air combat 5 or 6G turns weren't that unusual, and 7G weren't unheard of.
 

I don't know why you guys keep lowballing the numbers.

That is about 500 lbs too heavy for the P-40F - we had a bunch of discussions about this already in the thread. Loaded weight for a P-40F with 6 guns is ~8400 lbs. Most used in combat had 2 of those guns and their ammunition taken out. The P-40L came from the factory that way and had a loaded weight of 8,020 lbs.

Your engine rating for the Merlin XX is also too low, 1300 is military power, 1435 is (normal) WEP. Not talking overboosting here either. Obviously at 65" they went a bit faster.

Anyway regardless, power ratio is not measured that way. It's HP to lbs not lbs to HP.

P-40F is 0.15 hp/lb (245 Watts/kg) - 0.16 at WEP
P-40L is 0.16 hp/lb - 0.18 at WEP

Actual battlefield P-40F when facing a lot of air to air combat would be stripped to match P-40L.

Typhoon is still much better at 0.20 hp/lb (0.33 kW/kg)

However the Typhoon handled like an overloaded bus.


Anyway, if you think it didn't, post some charts. Go out and find some actual statistics or tests. The NACA roll rate chart is the only one I could find, if you have a better one produce it.
 

I don't believe I have said that they limited the planes to 42-45in but there is a big difference between 45in and 60 inches isn't there? let alone 70 inches. There is also a difference in the maintenance requirements.

Now lets look at the P-40N-1 for example
*10550ft.......378mph............3000rpm..............1480hp...............57in
*8,000ft........174mph.............3000rpm..............1480hp...............57in

The first is in level flight the 2nd is while climbing. the drop of about 200mph caused the loss of 2550ft of altitude at which 57in could be maintained.
Allison ratings are all over the place, this engine was supposed to do 1410hp at 9500ft at 57 in with no ram.

Look at any other planes at WWII Aircraft Performance and see the difference in altitude between level speed and climbing.

The 8.80 supercharger gear airplanes were lucky they could hit 61-62in of MAP with the engine stationary in a test house. They needed some forward speed just to get to 66in and a lot of forward speed to get to 70in. So much speed that the people that wrote the memo doubted they could do it without over revving the engine.

An early 8.80 supercharger geared engine was down to 52in at 5000ft with no Ram or the later ones were rated at 56in at 4300ft. WEP

In any case you now need to make up a lot if inches of pressure to make 66in of manifold pressure. The air at 5000ft is about 83% if the pressure it is at sea level.

So whip that P-40 doing 335-340mph at sea level using 66-70in of MAP into a steep climb and watch (and feel) as the speed bleeds off and the plane climbs into thinner air in under two minutes and you have lost 10in or more of your manifold pressure, yeah you still have a lot more power than the "book" 1150hp at 44in but you sure don't have 1600-1700hp anymore,

Banking may be an exaggeration but if you are turning you are loosing speed or at least not going at full speed and if you are not going full speed you don't have full ram and that means you don't have full power (or the 66-70 in power anyway) pull a real tight turn with your oh so maneuverable P-40 and the closer you slip to climbing speed (200mph or under) the more inches of RAM you loose. Yes you can still beat the book 44in by a hefty margin but if it took 330mph or more to get to that magic 70inchs you may be in the mid to low 60s coming out of a hard turn (depending on it's length.

Now please note that a Mustang using the same engine is 50-60mph faster than a P-40 and has that much more RAM due to speed. The fact that Mustangs may have used 70in at times without overspeed the engine doesn't mean the P-40 can do the same at all altitudes and conditions of flight the Mustang did.
 
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This one apparently landed just fine

 
Shortround6 said:
I don't believe I have said that they limited the planes to 42-25in but there is a big difference between 45in and 60 inches isn't there? let alone 70 inches. There is also a difference in the maintenance requirements.
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You haven't but it keeps coming up at 42" whatever in this thread and many others as you well know. And you don't seem to mind when people less well informed or knowledgeable than yourself spout all kinds of BS about P-40s for some reason.


I get that but even at 174 mph there is still a pretty comfortable margin for combat maneuvering (8,000') at boost for somewhere like Tunisia or Sicily, let alone Russia. Right?


I'll grant you they might not be able to overboost to 66" or 70" Hg and do a steep climb, but I don't think that is what they were talking about doing anyway. Overboosting like that means one of three things -
  1. Running away / disengaging from a battlefield (I think first and foremost),
  2. Chasing an enemy, or
  3. Dogfighting.
And in any of those scenarios such as are described in numerous fighter accounts some of which I have transcribed and posted here, that extra boost down low would come in very handy... and in fact did come in very handy and saved their lives. I'm not quite sure to what extent this translates to for Merlin XX / 28s but it was presumably similar.

Neville Duke described in one big hairball of a battle, diving out to evade Bf-109s, diving all the way down to the deck and opening up his throttle, then climbing back up into the fight and doing it again, then diving after a fleeing Bf 109 and shooting it down, all in a Kittyhawk III presumably the K type not the M. If I have time I'll try to find it again and transcribe it. James Stocky Edwards shot down one of the German experten while in a high speed flight away from another battle, he spotted the guy strafing the wreck of a Hurricane he had just shot down, and Edwards blew him away and kept going, easily outrunning the rest of his rotte of 109G2s. This won't work at 42" Hg.

Another US pilots account (whose name escapes me at the moment, George Moody or somebody) which I posted in this or another thread mentioned dueling with 3 Bf 109s and finally out-running them in a long fight and chase that went from a German airbase all the way back to his own. That was probably in a P-40F though it could have been a K.


My my ... "your oh so maneuverable P-40 " you wound me sir! Sure they'll lose speed in a turn - part of the value of the extra 300 hp or whatever is to accelerate back up to speed quicker and not stall out of a turn etc.

Instead of going one extreme to the other lets try to talk about the probable realities. You'll notice I don't frequently even mention the 70" Hg except as an outlier to prove a point. I am in agrement with you that 60" is probably much more common and I do grasp that it takes a toll on the engine to run so hot. Still pilot accounts I've read mention going up to 65" though they also mention their engine smoking sometimes as a result.


60 mph? That much? I'm still not convinced, the Allison memo mentions that the 70" was used in P-40 units so i have no reason not to believe them, and while I'm sure it could only be done down low, and at some risk to the engine, I suspect it could indeed be done. The Mustangs were obviously doing it for 15 minutes per that memo so I guess if your life was on the line you could risk the engine and still expect to make it home. Crew chief might be mad at you of course...

S
 

P-40s could sustain far more than 4Gs and the limit was basically what the pilot could endure. Of course any WW2 fighter will lose altitude in a turn though naturally. Usually you aren't pulling G's at all unless you are going pretty fast to begin with.
 

Just thinking about it one other difference with the Mustangs is maybe the cold - a lot colder flying over the North Sea than in Tunisia. Some of the engine tests done by the Aussies etc. do mention "Tropical Temperatures" being an issue.

It may also be the case that fighting in Italy was a bit easier on the Allied planes (cooler weather more of the year) than flying over Egypt, Algeria and Libya was.
 
That's a great video, did you catch where he calls the ambulance "the blood wagon". Its great that he made it back to survive this amazing action. We don't actually know the total damage done to the aircraft, ie the fuslage could be bent ect, but I would assume that a 2000 plus hp engine turning a14 ' propeller is going to need some trim.
 
Hello All,
It always gets to be much more of a personal argument when one starts discussing the merits of one fighter aircraft as compared to another.
No aircraft is superior in every respect to its contemporaries no matter how much we have glorified them since WW2. Regardless of how much we like a particular aircraft, we should be able to acknowledge that every aircraft had its faults.


I actually had not heard of the Merlin P-40 in Soviet service. As I see it, the advantage of the P-40F/L was above 15,000 feet at the cost of some low altitude performance and that does not sound like the kind of thing the Soviets would have liked.
The Merlin and later Allison was not nearly as tolerant of overboosting as the earlier engines.


Start another thread if you feel the need to. I believe the P-40K has SOME advantages over the Yak-1 and Yak-9D, but they are mostly in the areas of construction quality and refinement of equipment. Other than that, from a performance standpoint except at VERY low altitude, the Yak fighters are at least very comparable. You picked some of the lesser performing examples of those.
The problem with the P-40K is that it was a very heavy aircraft and except at Sea Level where the supercharger was able to supply enough boost to give it some serious performance, it didn't have enough engine power.
This is why when comparing speeds to the Spitfire Mk.IX, I was saying that 10,000 feet or even 6,000 feet was too high and the comparison should be made at Sea Level if the P-40 was to have any advantage.
The P-40M did see service in the Asia and Pacific but as a Lend-Lease aircraft to Australia and New Zealand.
You comment that the P-40M was quite heavy but its basic weight was 6899 pounds as compared to the 6880 pound basic weight of the P-40K.
A difference of 19 pounds is meaningless.

The problem with the P-40L and its weight reduction is that it was at the cost of durability of components with many aircraft requiring extensive service before they were fit for use. Often the older components were swapped in as replacements and so went the weight savings.
Figure that the Merlin added quite a bit of weight to the aircraft.
Basic Weight for a P-40E was 6702 pounds and for an otherwise identical P-40F was 7089 pounds.
Note that the lightened P-40L had a basic weight of 6840 pounds which is only 40 pounds less than the P-40K.
Gross weight is about 400 pounds less because it carries a lot less fuel and ammunition.

The reason why Shortround6 commented about maintaining performance while climbing and banking is because at least according to the Allison memo, 70 inches Hg could not be achieve without a LOT of ram effect and only very near Sea Level or by significantly exceeding RPM limits.

- Ivan.
 
While I certainly would not question your assertion that you have heard the A6m or the Spitfire called slow I must admit in all my years of reading and conversations with people about ww2 aircraft I have never heard it once. I have however heard or read slow as a discriptive term for the p40 more times than I can possibly hope to even estimate dispite most makes of the Warhawk being as fast or in some cases faster than these and other of its contemporaries as well.
 
I wish I could be more specific but I have read several times that the Merlins that were used in the p40F/L and that which were used in the Mustang were different. Something about the supercharger I believe. Was this not the case?
 

Hello Michael Rauls,
In the case of the A6M, I have heard it may times, though they were not all that slow in comparison to contemporaries until at least the A6M3 series came out. With the Spitfire, I have seen the comment about the Spitfire Mk.V and about no other mark that I can remember.
The problem with the P-40 is that the numbers tend to go all over the place.

michael rauls said:
I wish I could be more specific but I have read several times that the Merlins in that were used in the p40F/L and that which was used in the Mustang were different. Something about the supercharger I believe. Was this not the case?
Click to expand...

You are correct regarding the single stage two-speed Merlin in the P-40 and the two stage Merlin in the P-51.
I believe Shortround6 was actually referring to the Allison equipped Mustangs though.
They had about a 30-40 MPH advantage over the similarly equipped P-40 but the amusing thing is that with the switch to the Merlin, they had a similar advantage over the similarly equipped Spitfire Mk.IX and Mk.XVI.

- Ivan.
 
michael rauls said:
I wish I could be more specific but I have read several times that the Merlins that were used in the p40F/L and that which were used in the Mustang were different. Something about the supercharger I believe. Was this not the case?
Click to expand...
Single stage
 

I would be amazed if any single engine fighter hit by an 88mm AA gun didn't find difficulties in getting home.

I also find it interesting that you are happy to quote test pilots who exceeded 500 mph on a regular basis, (a claim I do not deny) as I am confident British test pilots exceeded 525mph in Typhoons because that is what test pilots do, they test aircraft.
But when a test pilot makes the comments they put in writing about the P40N its ignored. not mentioned and the question I put to you:-

So which of these is closer to handling like an overloaded bus?

Remains unanswered

Another question I would put to you is. Where is your evidence that the Typhoon wasn't maneuverable I ask this as clearly the American test pilots disagree with you. Remember that roll rates is only part of the maneuverability question and even here they said if rolled well.
 
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