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Turbo prop P-38 for Vietnam?

I knew an old P-47 jockey from WWII. While he never made it overseas (that I recall), he was fully qualified by war's end and as such would have had the benefit of being trained by experienced pilots returned from the ETO. I take what he had to say about the Jug without reservation and two points he made repeatedly, were:

  1. There was nothing like the P-47 in the ground attack mode. He described the manner by which they were being trained to lead an armored target ahead so as to strike the ground and ricochet the rounds up thru the thinner armor below. I can see where on one hand one could say that sounds like nutty bullshit, and where it would be plausible on another. I'll give the old vet the nod on that one in the absence of anyone having something to the contrary.
  2. He went out of his way to lament the absence of the P-47 on the Korean War battlefield. He was adamant and somewhat angry about it - more so than any other topic concerning the P-47. He firmly believed the Jug had more life in her and would have torn the Chicom ground forces a new asshole like nothing they had seen.

Rest in peace Lt. George Anderson - you were a cool old bird and I do sorely miss our all too brief chats.

WmB

Reply to
WmB
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The other point to remember is that in that timeframe, the Merlin was itself about to be superseded by the Griffon powerplant with an extra 500hp.

Reply to
Chek

FWIW The postwar air force was lead by successor's of Hap Arnold's who were firmly committed to the strategic air force dream and most were 8th Air Force Veterans. The Mustang was the fighter that finally made their dream a possibility in Europe and by 1947 the P-47s were on the way to the boneyard or the Guard. The P-51 was the prop fighter of choice until it could be replaced by jets because of its association with the strategic bombing crowd, that simple. No one for saw a mess like Korea, all the air force brass were mesmerized by the threat of Russia and the drive toward a strategic air command.

Bill Shuey

Reply to
William H. Shuey

Alright then my question is the P-39. Why in the heck did they decide to not include the turbocharger. It seems to have really crippled it. Why not add it back in when they realized the problem? I would have thought it would have been easy enough, it was designed with it.

Reply to
Gray Ghost

Jeff Barringer wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@corp.supernews.com:

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WWII fighter

tale?

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The P-38 was

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guessing.

Um you do know that the early Mustang was Allsion powered and that the Brits did a quickie conversion to the Merlin which made the Mustang the legend it was. Doesn't seem that hard to switch engines. Mosquitos and Lancs were actually designed to accept "Power Packs" - interchangeable engines.

Reply to
Gray Ghost

When it was designed the -39 didn't have all the equipment included that it would need to survive combat. Adding the turbocharger back would have made the aircraft too heavy and would probably have rendered the addition useless. As it was it did a very good job low down and since most combat over the Eastern Front happened at low altitiudes there was no incentive to return the turbo. Just my educated guess.

Bill Banaszak, MFE

Reply to
Mad-Modeller

The eventual cure for the vibration in the R2800 was the use of dampeners in the crank web counter weights, spring dampeners in the accessories drives and many more.

There were iterations of the solution, the book R2800 - Pratt & Whitney's Dependable Masterpiece, has a table that is 20 (!) pages long detailing the crankshaft studies in relation to vibration.

There is a mini history here:

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(pdf's here)
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(nice radial animations)

Keith Walker

Reply to
news.verizon.net

Unfortunately, the 38 was designed in the mid to late 30s, and had a lot of problems aerodynamically that limited its performance. Fixing these would have required such a major redesign I don't wonder that they went to a newer design.

There was also a turbo-prop Mustang. The 51 was a later design. Only by a few years- but those were years that saw big advances, such as airfoils with a higher critical mach number. Even the 51 had to be fixed for the later versions, but the fixes were not as radical as what would have been required for the 38.

A contemporary of the 38 was the 39, again a plane that started with good goals, but the results showed limitations of the state of the art. Biggest problem of course was the installation of the Allison with the single stage blower instead of the turbo originally intended, but even if they had put in the better engine its design was so critical and optimized that every change they made in the thing made it worse :-(

Reply to
Don Stauffer

replying to frank, Bruv wrote: Hey dude! Sorry I?m 14 years late hehehe, but just finished watching Scorseses ?Aviator? And found out about this pretty bird

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that?s the one your friend mentioned, it doesn?t quite match the time period, but it?s probably the closest resemblance to a turboprop p-38.

Reply to
Bruv

replying to frank, Bruv wrote: Hey dude! Sorry I?m 14 years late hehehe, but just finished watching Scorseses ?Aviator? And found out about this pretty bird

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Maybe that?s the one your friend mentioned, it doesn?t quite match the time period, but it?s probably the closest resemblance to a turboprop p-38.

Reply to
Bruv

But the XF-11 dates to the immediate post-war years. There weren't many built. Are there any left?

Reply to
Mad Modeller

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