RetroWarTHINK007: The P-38 Doesn't Look Right...
Blasphemy to P-38 fangirls, but non-pilot aerospace engineer Kelly Johnson chose the wrong configuration #4 for what became the P-38: twin engines spread horizontally and widely apart--counter-rotating or not--are fatally unstable with 1 engine out.
http://p38assn.org/aboutp38.htm
During the early years of production, Lightnings received the reputation of a plane that was tough to handle, especially on take-off if you lost one engine. Several Lockheed test pilots, including Tony LeVier, Ben Kelsey and Milo Burcham gave regular demonstrations of one-engine feats to assuage the concerns of the pilots who were going to fly this new and very different aircraft. Burcham was also the flight instructor on the P‑38 Training film (which you can view at the top of the left column).
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Moreover, handing the engines to make them counter-rotate made an already too-complicated machine even worse.
JOHNSON SHOULD HAVE CHOSE CONFIGURATION #6.
Two engines in push/pull configuration--if one engine goes out there IS ZERO ASYMMETRIC thrust to flip the plane over or sideways. In fact, BOTH ENGINES can be the SAME and turn the same way yet their torque COUNTER-ACTS the other. This means drastically more POWER and why the Germans built the Dornier Do335 and Cessna the Model 337 SkyMaster aka USAF O-2.
P-38 v6.0 would fly at least 50 mph faster, SAFER to control in 1 engine out, be less complex and prone to malfunction. You take-off with MORE FUEL as a twin-engined plane but could SAFELY turn-off 1 engine thanks to them both being inline to conserve fuel for longer ranges re: Yamamoto raid. P-3C Orion 4-engined, maritime patrol bomber crews routinely turn-off engines to conserve fuel to extend range/patrol duration.
Apologists will say the prop on the front blur and no armament there would reduce P-38 quick-shooting firepower--YES, less reflex firepower but wing-mounted machine guns and cannon ON EVERY OTHER WW2 WARBIRD zeroed to trajectory merge at x amount of distance didn't stop them from blasting thousands upon thousands of targets, did it?
Having more P-38s NOT CRASH, and NOT KILL as many friendly pilots as they did trumps the relatively minor clean nose-for-firepower advantage of the classic Lightning we know.
In fact...the v6.0 Lightning's front prop could have had a 20mm or P-39/P-63's 37mm autocannon shooting through its spinner. That's the same or MORE firepower. Plus, 2x more medium or heavy machine guns could synchronized-shoot thru the front prop--like our P-39s/P-63s, legendary P-40 Warhawks (seemed to work well for the AVG Flying Tigers, huh?), the German Me109s, Fw190s and Japanese Zeros/Rufes, too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1av0Wg2kXo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_P-39_Airacobra
The P-39 was used by the Soviet Air Force, and enabled individual Soviet pilots to collect the highest number of kills attributed to any U.S. fighter type flown by any air force in any conflict. While Lt. Bill Fiedler was the only American pilot to become an ace in a P-39, many later U.S. aces scored one or two of their victories in the type. The Airacobra's low-altitude performance was good and its firepower was impressive. It soon became a joke in the Pacific Theatre that a P-400 was a P-40 with a Zero on its tail.
In February 1937, Lieutenant Benjamin S. Kelsey, Project Officer for Fighters at the United States Army Air Corps (USAAC), and Captain Gordon P. Saville, fighter tactics instructor at the Air Corps Tactical School, issued a specification for a new fighter via Circular Proposal X-609. Brigadier General Benjamin S. Kelsey recalled in 1977 he and Lieutenant Gordon P. Saville (later General) drew up the specification in 1937 using the word "interceptor" as a way to bypass the inflexible Army Air Corps requirement for pursuit aircraft to carry no more than 500 lb (230 kg) of armament including ammunition. Kelsey was looking for a minimum of 1,000 lb (450 kg) of armament.[11]
The complete armament fit consisted of the T9 [37mm] cannon with a pair of Browning M2 .50 caliber (12.7 mm) [heavy] machine guns mounted in the nose. This changed to two .50 in (12.7 mm) and two .30 in (7.62 mm) guns in the XP-39B (P-39C, Model 13, the first 20 delivered) and two .50 in (12.7 mm) and four .30 in (7.62 mm) (all four in the wings) in the P-39D (Model 15), which also introduced self-sealing tanks and shackles (and piping) for a 500 lb (230 kg) bomb or drop tank.[23]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_S._Kelsey
Benjamin Scovill Kelsey (March 9, 1906 – March 3, 1981) was an American aeronautical engineer and test pilot. Serving as America's chief fighter projects officer, he helped bring success in World War II to the United States Army Air Forces by initiating the manufacture of innovative fighter aircraft designs, and by working to quickly increase American fighter production to meet the needs of the coming war.
Kelsey co-authored the technical specifications which led to the development of the P-39 Airacobra and the P-38 Lightning. He worked around Air Corps strictures to initiate the development of drop tanks for American fighters. Kelsey was the driving force behind a program of advanced airfoil research which eventually resulted in the P-51 Mustang.
After the war, Kelsey served in various staff assignments supervising weather operations, personnel and materiel. He was an important committee member of the group that approved and funded the rocket-powered North American X-15.
Kelsey became frustrated by inflexible Air Corps restrictions on pursuit (fighter) aircraft which limited the weight of all guns and ammunition to 500 lbs. He wished for at least 1,000 pounds (450 kg) of armament so that American fighters could dominate their battles.
Lockheed won the X-608 proposal with their twin-engine Model 22 design, signing a contract with the Air Corps in June 1937.[8] Kelsey flew the first prototype of the P-38 Lightning, the XP-38, on January 27, 1939.[8] After Lockheed performed a series of tests and associated engineering adjustments, Kelsey took the prototype across the country on a record-breaking speed flight in February 1939.
The P-38 ended up being the "sweetheart of Kelsey's flying career", according to author Jeff Ethell.[12] Kelsey stayed in close contact with the twin-engine fighter during every phase of its development and implementation.[12] As part of Operation Bolero, the first-ever delivery of fighter aircraft flying under their own power from the U.S. to the U.K., Kelsey piloted a P-38 to the U.K. in late July 1942. After meeting with British airmen and reviewing the newest developments of air combat, Kelsey returned the U.S. by ship.[14]
On April 9, 1943, Kelsey performed a flight test on a modified P-38G to see if Lockheed's newly developed dive flap could be engaged after terminal velocity was reached in a dive. After climbing to 35,000 ft, Kelsey initiated a dive. At maximum speed, he pulled the lever to engage the new flaps but nothing happened. Pulling harder, the handle came off in his hand. Kelsey applied full rudder and aileron at the same time, and suddenly the aircraft lost one wing and the whole tail, and entered an inverted flat spin.[15] Kelsey bailed out and suffered a broken ankle upon landing. The P-38 crashed upside down into a hillside near Calabasas, California.
The existence of the P-51 Mustang has been credited to Kelsey's dogged determination to see the project to completion.
Kelsey's boss, Colonel Oliver P. Echols, shopped the design to the Anglo-French Purchasing Commission who were told to find an aircraft manufacturer that wasn't busy with war production. Echols and Kelsey made it understood that the NACA airflow research data collected on the XP-46 would be made available to the new manufacturer. North American Aviation (NAA) expressed interest and was sold the NACA data for $56,000. They produced a new design, the NA-73, which was approved by the British who christened the fighter "Mustang". Echols and Kelsey arranged to get two prototypes out of the British contract, and, on July 7, 1941, even before the prototypes arrived at Wright Field, Kelsey ordered 150 P-51s from NAA. Nine months later Kelsey ordered 500 nearly identical A-36 Apache models that he was able to purchase with funds intended for attack bombers. In this manner Kelsey kept the assembly line busy, so that the factory would be primed to make Mustang fighters once a new contract could be arranged.[18] After the U.S. declared war in December 1941, thousands of military aircraft were ordered, and NAA ramped up for Mustang production.
Once the Mustang was in combat in the European Theatre of Operations (ETO), Kelsey was able to collect pilot's opinions of the aircraft as well as going out on combat missions himself to determine whether improvements could be made to the design. Kelsey clarified and expedited the communication of battlefield requests back to the NAA production team such that the turnaround time of modifications was minimized.
Kelsey and the group of American airmen saw that self-sealing fuel tanks were critical in air combat. As well, fighters appeared to require bullet-proof windscreens and better oxygen systems. After passing through Paris, Spaatz and Kelsey flew back to London on May 31.[20] In England, Kelsey determined that the threat posed to Allied convoys by German air and naval power meant that an aerial ferry route should be established over the North Atlantic so that long-range aircraft could be flown to the United Kingdom rather than shipped.
In November 1941, Kelsey asked his Lockheed contacts to design drop tanks to extend the range of the P-38, even though Air Corps policy at the time was absolutely inflexible toward fighter aircraft carrying external fuel tanks—the so-called Bomber Mafia favoring heavy bombers wanted no challenge from fighters and medium bombers in the long-range department. Lockheed proceeded with the request, starting with a batch of 100 P-38Es intended for photo reconnaissance, despite having no written orders, only Kelsey's handshake. Thus, when combat requirements called for longer range via drop tanks, the P-38 was already equipped with fuel lines, hardpoints, and a supply of drop tanks.[22] One famous example of these drop tanks was in Operation Vengeance, April 1943, when P-38Gs needed extra range to intercept and kill Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto.
Kelsey reverted to his permanent rank of colonel December 30, 1955 and retired from active duty the following day.[1]
In The Dragon's Teeth? Kelsey observed that, for proper defense, a nation must maintain a "force in being", the same concept as 'fleet in being' but applied to the entire military of a nation at peace. He predicted that "Specific measures to counter a specific threat will almost guarantee that if an emergency occurs it will be in a different place and of a different nature."[35] Instead of trying to solve every military challenge in advance, Kelsey wrote that a nation must save its money and keep a core of military engineering and manufacturing industries alive by giving them enough business so that they don't disappear. In response to an attack, these industries could quickly expand to meet the challenge. Kelsey compared this careful husbanding of the potential for war-making effort with the myth of Cadmus, a Phoenician prince who supposedly sowed dragon's teeth in the ground to create an instant army.[36]
I have already stated the P-38 float plane capability should have been put to use. Call this v6.0 the Sea Super Lightning (SSL).
Moreover again, the v6.0 Sea Lightning should have had FOLDING WINGS--and not just for the fucking Navy, either.
http://p38assn.org/aboutp38.htm
Lockheed proposed a carrier-based "Model 822" version of the Lightning for the United States Navy. The Model 822 would have featured folding wings, an arresting hook, and stronger undercarriage for carrier operations. The Navy wasn't interested, as they regarded the Lightning as too big for carrier operations and didn't like liquid-cooled engines anyway, and the Model 822 never went beyond the paper stage. (Here's what it "could" have looked like!) However, the Navy did operate four land-based F-5Bs in North Africa, with these aircraft inherited from the USAAF and redesignated "FO-1."
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An aft-facing observer/rear gunner would help find ground targets and keep enemy fighters away--shooting them down with a 20mm autocannon turret with restrictions so as to not shoot the rear prop or tail ala Sean Connery's Indy dad in The Last Crusade.
ModelVISION! to Show the Way...
Someone should WHAT IF? a ModelVISION! scale model of the v6.0 with folding wings and the floatplane kit.
Another WHAT IF? ModelVISION! we need would be mating an extant P-38 or the v6.0 on top of a light-tank-carrying-Hamilcar heavy glider so they could possibly fly without a tow plane after lift-off and have protection from enemy anti-aircraft and fighter attacks once detached near the objective area for the glider to make its Assault Landing.
U.K. GAL-49 Hamilcar Heavy Glider Planet Hobby RESIN
https://www.ebay.com/i/193296191907?chn=ps&norover=1&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-117182-37290-0&mkcid=2&itemid=193296191907&targetid=885020184850&device=c&mktype=pla&googleloc=9013053&poi=&campaignid=9423618435&mkgroupid=96387797275&rlsatarget=pla-885020184850&abcId=1141016&merchantid=6296724&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIobW-ps636QIVA9bACh3hpQLTEAQYAyABEgKYHvD_BwE
https://www.ebay.com/itm/GAL-49-Hamilcar-RAF-WW-II-D-Day-Assault-Glider-Planet-Resins-1-72-PLT-102-/193296191907
https://www.scalemates.com/kits/planet-models-plt102-gal-49-hamilcar--112924
We should develop float plane fuel tank kits for our existing fighter-bombers to self-deploy without needing constant air refueling by vulnerable tankers (operated from too-many foreign occupation bases pissing off the locals and bankrupting America) converted from flimsy civilian airliners--or even KC-17s or Long-Range Amphibious seaplanes (LRAs) but don't hold your breath--demand KC-17s and LRAs... These Fighter-Bomber Seaplanes (FBSes) could fulfill the goals of the fabulous SeaDart supersonic seaplane fighter--to include being LO-LO craned into/out of the water for WTOLs from nearly ANY USN ship now with stern flight decks for crapola slow, short-range helicopters which can't provide vital air cover. Of course, a turn-table MAGLEV catapult could dry-launch a small FBS--say a F-35B or F-16--like we used to do with SC-1/2 SeaHawk seaplane fighters.
Kelly Johnson knew well the Navy's refusal to cope with reality.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_Johnson_(engineer)
Johnson had a 15th rule that he passed on by word of mouth. According to the book Skunk Works, the 15th rule is: "Starve before doing business with the damned Navy. They don't know what the hell they want and will drive you up a wall before they break either your heart or a more exposed part of your anatomy."
Push/Pull propfan configurations should replace horizontally-opposed and tragically UNSAFE "twins" from ALL of aviation. If one is stuck with just a single engine, counter-rotate 2 propfans--ASK THE RUSSIANS who know how to contra-prop for help. If you can't get a 2nd inline engine, then you damn well better have ejection seats and a Recovery Parachute (RP) system:
combatreform.org/escape.htm
A non-metallic radar stealthy assault glider akin to the Hamilcar capable of carrying a M113A4 Super Gavin light tank, 3-man DRAGOON and 9-man infantry MECHANDO squad should be developed that would TO by an up-engined, 2-man, OA-10X Warthog armored attack plane on top--like the proposed P-38 Lightning/GAL-49 Hamilcar combination. Look at this FUNCTIONALLY. Instead of adding engines/fuel tanks to the glider itself, the P-38 or A-10 act as DETACHABLE AERO PROPULSION UNITS that give a 2-for-1 advantage that when separate attack/clear the glider's Assault Landing Zones (ALZs) and ward off enemy MIGs. The stealth assault glider is also an AERO UNIT for the Super Gavin light tank; albeit it creates a new potential bureaucracy of glider pilots which I have no problem with this. I met Doug Wilmer author of The Glider Gang and WW2 glider combat veteran at Fort Bragg and his many insights convince me that the pilot/grunt is highly desirable. RECOVERY of empty gliders could be done by snatching them with hooks as was done by WW2's end. This is really the only downside to modern assault glider tech--the only infamous TOWING would be done after the area is safe from enemy opposition to return gliders for re-use--or not. By not having engines/fuel tanks wed to gliders making them airplanes they could be inexpensive enough to be 1-time use. I would cleverly make the wings detach and have them towable by ground vehicles or attached to an XC-120-like Pack Plane as LTG Gavin KIWI pods but a TILT-WING like the XC-142 but turbofan powered for low Radar Cross Section (RCS) stealth.
Of course, the simplest & minimalist way to make tanks fly is the FLYING TANK--attach an AERO UNIT to the M113A8 AeroGavin albeit good for short, operational/tactical maneuvers under 100 miles. Stealth Assault Transport Gliders (SATGs) will still be needed for GeoStrategic movements over 100 miles--say from CONUS to OBJ, so this isn't a ZERO SUM game where we can only have 1 capability and must choose 1.
Airborne!
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