First let me say, I agree with this and don't worry, I was kidding I am definitely
not opening another P-40 related thread and if I opened one on the Yak series it would be in praise of them. You are right people can take comparisons of aircraft personally, but I doubt there are that many dedicated Typhoon fans here. Something about P-40s in particular seems to rub sandpaper on peoples privates to an extent I am often amazed by. So I'm going to leave that topic alone for a while once this thread tapers off. There is probably already a hit out on me on the Dark Web over this one.
Nothing against you at all. I disagree with you a little but I'm definitely not mad about it. I was kidding.
Yeah I'm no expert on the Merlin but from what the others have posted, +16 lb is pretty good performance probably and for the Russian Front, a P-40 with higher altitude capability that would confer some advantages - namely it could fly top cover over the battlefield. I think they did have more maintenance trouble with the Merlins though for whatever reason. I don't know if any P-40F ever got into service in Russia I just found some mentions that some of the ones intended for the British were diverted to Russia, maybe 50 maybe 100. They may have been used for maintenance or spares or the boat carrying them could have been sunk. I haven't seen any mention of their use in Russia yet.
Yes I agree the Yak fighters were
comparable, but they were (at least among) the best the Russians had. They probably climbed better, and had a bit better combat speed at medium altitude but a P-40K could out turn them, could dive
much faster, was safer for the pilot, had longer range and had
a lot more firepower (albeit the nose guns are more accurate). But in general this is what I would say, a P-40E was probably about as good as an early 1941 Yak and a P-40K was about as good as a later 1942 Yak, better than the other available planes (LaGG, MiG, I-16, Hurricane and so on) except the P-39 which seems to have been ideally suited for the Russians, and most importantly, a P-40K in the (Low Altitude) conditions of the Russian Front would definitely give a Soviet pilot a good chance to survive and deal death to the Germans. This is why so many high ranking Russian aces and HSU winners flew that specific subtype such as M. V Kuznetzov (
seen here celebrating some victories in famous propaganda photos with a P-40K in the background) who ended the war with 36 individual (22 with the P-40) and 12 shared victory claims, Leonovich Ivan Semyonovich (28 victories, most in P-40), and Denisov Konstantin Dmitrievich who scored all of his 13 individual and 6 shared victories while flying the P-40K specifically.
This would not make it a "second rate" fighter in my book unless you also considered the Yak 1, Yak 9 etc. second rate. I wouldn't. I would say they were good fighters and at least some of the P-40s were closely matched.
Of course the Russians didn't have that many P-40Ks. And ultimately the Yak 1b / 9 / 3 series and La 5 / 7 series became the perfect fighters for the Russian Front, ideally tailored to the conditions and superior to any P-40
for that Theater. But I think what made the P-40 superior in one sense, was that while the P-40 could fairly easily be adapted by Soviet pilots and ground crew to conditions in Leningrad, Crimea or Murmansk, it could also be adapted by American pilots and groundcrew to conditions in Rangoon, Kunming, and the Himalayas, by British and Australian pilots and ground crew to conditions in Alexandria and Syria, by American and Australians to conditions in New Guinea, the Solomons and Darwin (and as far north as Alaska), and by Americans and British fighting in Tunisia, Sardinia and Italy. How good would a Yak 1 perform over Darwin or Rangoon? I don't know honestly so it's not a facetious question, but I do consider the Yak series to be more specialized.
I think it may not have been the best fighter in all of those Theaters and certainly not for the whole war but it was pretty competitive, more than is generally acknowledged, in all of them and as I have pointed out a few times, shot down a lot of enemy aircraft and destroyed a lot of enemy ground and Sea targets well into 1944. That is what made the P-40 (in my opinion) a damn good fighter.
I really don't think the P-40 is competitive in general against the Spit IX which has both excellent performance
and maneuverability though it is interesting to learn that they may have been competitive in speed down low.
Some P-40M were apparently diverted to 23rd Fighter Group and some other US units by what means I don't know, such last minute diversions of Lend Lease were not unusual. Both the M and the K were quite heavy, the difference is that the K was kind of a 'hot rod' at least at low altitude while the M was designed to have better high altitude performance at the expense of a much more tepid engine regime. I think the M was only really suitable for FB missions, unfortunately the Soviets and British got a lot of them. Both P-40M and K of course may have been partly stripped by the Russians as they had done with earlier Tomahawk and Kittyhawk variants though I don't know if they did.
I think you are confusing the 'stripped' so called "high altitude interceptor" early version of the P-40N with the P-40L. The P-40N had several parts exchanged for new and lighter types - aluminum radiators instead of brass, a smaller cheaper wooden seat, removed some instruments, smaller wheels, removed battery and starter (replaced by an external starting system) different hydraulic system and many other changes. Many of these such as the starter
were put back in in the field and the radiator and oil cooler may well have been replaced with brass ones for all I know. I know that some pilots complained about the starters in particular and in places like Burma they added extra navigation gear. But they also sometimes lightened them such as for 'Hump' missions over the Himalayas.
The P-40L by contrast did not have any different radiators or anything, they just had all the field stripping already being done on the P-40F by ground crew done in the factory. These are the items I already mentioned: extra forward wing fuel tank(s) removed (and the fuel that went with it), some armor under the radiator, two guns and some ammunition, some oil and so on. These all could be and were added back in whenever there was a reduced threat of enemy fighters. But the stripped version was how they were often used in the heavy air combat over Tunisia, Pantelleria, Sardinia, Sicily and so on where the US fighter groups racked most of all their victories in the first 6 months of 1943.
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I believe that was speculation, guessing, and it's worth noting that some Soviet pilots like Golodnikov specifically mentioned raising the RPM a little. However I have always suggested that the slightly lower but still very high ratings from 60" to 66" could be and were used. The 60" rating was eventually approved as the official WEP setting for the P-40K and was apparently achievable at 2,500 ft. Not very high but reasonable for the Russian Front - that boost level conferred over 1550 hp which makes a P-40K pretty scary.
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