P-38, 2nd best US plane?

Chrome the link does not work, but no matter as I know this site well and the gent has some of my information including Rüdels surrender which materials I gave to friend Gordon Permann for him to publish on this Fw 190 site. Aalso profiles of Fw 190A's done by web-master and freidn of my web-site Neil Page

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I think it should be : -

http://fw190.hobbyvista.com/Index.html

 

Thanx Martin. I pretty well suck at computers. Last thought on 38. It was rather big, & therefore an easier target than single engine fighters. I once read an account of a 38 making it back to base on one motor in med theater, but yes, speed would be gone.

A friend of mine who has a 38 prop in his room told me a tale of a test pilot flying a 38 upsidown, 6 ft off the deck on one motor. Don't know if thats impressive or not, he seemed impressed by it.

 

Is it correct that the Hellcat was the top-scoring allied fighter in WW2?

 

The P38 was a great plane. I think the Corsair and Hellcat's out did it though. With the better roll rate and tighter turning.

^ yes

EDIT: don't forget that the highest scoring American ace of the war (and of all time for that matter) got his 40 kills in a P38 in the PTO.

 

against most single-engined fighters the P-38J/L's were just as fast and climbed as well. When the P-38 got airelon boost they could roll extremely well too(at least at higher speeds) and at low speeds could just about turn with anything. In the ETO the P-38's problems were mainly from improperly blended fuel not the cold temeperatures for the P-38 also flew in the Aleutions and weather is worse there(and colder) then in Northern Europe ,it certainly didn't have the engine problems there as in Europe.

 

The P-38 was very good at lots of tasks that no other fighter could do, even after the Mustang came along. I know a guy who's dad flew P-38's in the Aleutians during the war, a smart choice for a fighter there and maybe the only choice - you could not beat the reliability of two engines nor the long legs of the P-38 over long stretches of empty ocean.

Indispensable, yes, second best, no! Maybe 3rd or 4th, 2nd going to Hellcat or Corsair like the other people say. There were too many things wrong with the P-38 that could never really be fixed. Any fighter the axis had could turn inside it, so dogfighting was problematic if you were flying one. Your best hope against fighters was to swoop down out of the sun, blast em with the 4 50's in the nose, and climb away before they knew what hit em!

If you in turn were bounced by enemy fighters you could be in alot of trouble really fast. The p-38 was heavier than almost any axis fighter so you'd think you could just dive and get away - but you couldn't do that in a P-38! There was a problem encountered by P-38's during long dives where aerodynamics were such that the pilot could NOT pull out of the dive and simply hit the ground! It took alot of crashed P-38's and dead pilots (with some calling in what was happening with the plane while on the way to meet their maker, in the hope of helping the living!) before they finally figured out the "compressibility" problem and reconfigured the 38 to make it not such a death trap for its own pilots.

 

An interesting problem of the P-38 was that its aerodynamic performance was severely degraded in cold skies due to higher air density which in part accounts for its much poorer performance in ETO than PTO or MTO.

The P-38 was a monster in PTO. The hotter, thinner air made much of its compressibility and maneuverability problems go away. It was much faster than the Zero, had superb range and outgunned everything the Japanese had. In the excellent Fire in the Sky one Japanese naval intelligence officer rued that the appearance of the P-38 meant the Empire irrevocably lost the war in the air. Lindberg in an authorized combat patrol flew the P-38 and shot down a zero--all he had to do, he wrote, was to turn into the Japanese and flew head to head to the zero because with the firepower of one cannon and four HMGs he would be victorious by default.

In MTO & PTO it was initially a match for the early Bf-109 and Fw-190 models. Once the 109 G and 190 D models enter production, not so much.

 

The P-38 late model J's and L's pretty much did away with alot of the problems the earlier models had. Dive brakes solved the compressibility problem to a large degree but even the P-47 had the same problem. A P-38L was quite capable of 440+ MPH ,a climb rate of around 4500+ FPM, and it could even dogfight!!! Several Luftwaffe pilots flying 109G's said they could usually dive then zoom back up after attacking an enemy but that didn't work against the P-38 which transitioned from level flight to climb very,very well and you certainly didn't want to get into a turning battle with it . If the US would have just interrupted production lines for a short while it could have placed the P-38K into production a real world beater IMHO.

 

From what I've read the P38 ETO was poor as a dog fighter & that why the RAF never used them
I think in ETO the P47 was a good fighter after the P51 but don't try & make out the P38 was better than in was

 

Which P-38 model? The earlier models up till late J's didn't roll that well (till they got boosted airelons)but still turned very sharply thew L's with the manuver flaps could really turn sharply. As far as the excerpt about it being a dogfighter well read "Luftwaffe Fighter Planes & Aces" several German pilots stated this .
The P-38's problems in ETO stemmed from engine problems which were the result of improperly blended fuel. I'm not saying the P-38 was necessarily better then it's contemporaries or was the best,2nd best or whatever US fighter only that it wasn't necessarily inferior either. It certainly had it's problems but so did other aircraft like in diving even the P-51 had problems at times with it's wings shearing off.

 

I hate to change the subject, but someone mentioned earlier about the F6F being better than the P-47. I have a number of books saying that the Ki-84 could evenly fight P-47's, Corsairs, P-51's etc., but could outperform the Hellcat. What gives? Most people agree that the Hellcat was a better dogfighter than the P-47.

 

no doubt the P-38 was a fantastic ground pounder-strafer over the P-51 according to pilot veterans flying the crate. gun cams seem to indicate so as well not the trailing probs the wing - mg outfitted crates had

 

The nose gun armament also made it extremely accurate, as guncams show as well.

 

friend I just said that in my above post ............. no probs

 

I love these subjective posts, it really gets you thinking about the different attributes of every fighter type.

 

i though the p-38 was the most over-rated US fighter during the war.

 

The P-38 suffered poor performance in dense air. MTO and PTO alleviated the problem which partly accounted for their improved performance. It was greatly feared by the Japanese, and could fight with early 109s and 190s on even terms; against later 109 and 190 models, something better was needed.

Concurring with an earlier post by Kruska, it is interesting to note that post war interrogations reveal that many German pilots hated fighting Spitfire and P-47 more than the P-51. The former was an extremely capable and formidable opponent, while the latter was very hard to kill. One US pilot who flew both P-47 and P-51 said that if he can choose one machine to fight the Dora, it would be P-47, due to its tougher engine, better armor and firepower.

I think the P-51 was undeniably a good fighter, but its greatness laid more with its strategic characteristics rather than tactical.

 

interesting T-C every LW pilot I have interviewed hated coming up agasint he P-51.

it may be safe to say that there is really no comparison in US fighter jocks in coming up against the Dora as 9/10ths of the victories associated with claims of the D-9 were by RAF forces. Most US pilots did not even know what a long nose was except for in the ID books they claiming or thinking they had shot one down when in truth it was one of the many Anton variations.

 

Found these two quotes;
Writer Jerry Scutts, quoting German pilots in his book "JG 54": "The Jagflieger had to keep a wary eye out for enemy fighters, particularly Spitfires, a type JG 54's pilots had developed a particular aversion to...Pilot reflections do not, surprisingly enough, reflect over-much respect for the Mustang or Lightning, both of which the Germans reckoned their Fockes were equal to - unless they were met in substantial numbers."



Karl Stein, Luftwaffe Fw 190 pilot (who served mainly on the Eastern front: "English and American aircraft appeared on the scene in those closing days of the European war. Spitfires were the most feared, then Mustangs..."