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At 01:57 PM 10/5/01 -0400, you wrote:
Oh, P38's were fine for missions where you
>weren't going to have to get into a close-in scrap, and could try and
>out-run (rather than out-turn) an enemy. Or where the action was up so
>high that their superchargers gave an advantage. But get into a dogfight
>with a few late-war Zekes or FW190s and you might just have found out
>that they were also VERY difficult to bail out of without getting
>decapitated.
>
>It's a lovely plane, but there was a reason why it was deployed on very
>specific missions where its unique capabilities were required as a
>trade-off against what it COULDN'T do.
Well said, Greg.
And do you know which fighter went out of the inventory first after the
war? Yep, you guessed it. The P-38 was a plumbers nightmare. With
pipes going every where (remember the oil coolers in the back of the
boom?), they were man-intensive to keep running. Granted, they were
fast = ran into pre-breaking-the-sound-barrier compressibility problems.
And super when every thing ran. And had no 'bad engine,' since they
went in opposite directions. And my uncle had some time in `em.
But they were cold! Why were they so successful in North Africa
and the Far East, but not Northern Europe? Frozen pilots do not
fight well.
The lesson here is every plane has its good points. I like the `coupe
because what it has = relatively cheap to gas up, cheap to keep up,
easy to fly, reasonable speed. I try to stay away from what it is not
good for = long cross country, short (soft) air fields.
Percy in Portland
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