'Hayai';

'>>61577473
pacific theatre was very favorable for the P-38
lower altitude compared to european theatre where the P-38 was more optimal and the P-38 had a larger internal gas tank to take advantage of wider distances of the theatre

zeroes were also slower relative to the P-38, so it could boom and zoom them more effectively
whereas the speed difference was much smaller against 109s and FWs, making the reduced maneuverability more of a deal breaker';

'>>61577473
Energy state isn't just about speed - on the first pass a P-38 coming from a dive could match even a Zero's initial turn at cruising velocity. Bong clearly understood not to go rolling down to the deck after ones that did evade. It was a very stable gun platform too.

>>61577503
Clarifying that first part - the Lightning had better performance at altitude than any other fighter in the Pacific theater of 1942, so it enjoyed the energy-state advantage so crucial for it's success. There's also reports of cold-weather issues and US-UK fuel-blending discrepancies that wouldn't have hampered early-war operations in the South Pacific.';

'>>61577473
most air to air kills occurred against mostly unaware targets. dogfights were more chaotic and distracted than almost anyone ever relates. spotting airplanes in the air is extremely difficult and most of these aircraft lacked the automation necessary to drive maximum performance during actual combat. the top P47 pilot of the war never used his water injection system, for example, despite the performance increase it offered.';

'>>61577473
>Faster
>Better armed
>Way more durable
>Stronger climber
And of course
>Having a culture that values human life over anheroing when you run out of ammunition';

'>>61578556
also Japanese pilot training was... Asiatic.';

'>>61577473
Zoom and Boom tactics. Get in fast, hit hard, and use your momentum to get away before the enemy can line you up. US fighters were famously good at this.';

'Because jap fighters were glorified stunt planes built of tissue paper and gas cand, so a close packed nose armament of .50cals is pure rape.';

'There's a pretty cool little museum in Superior, WI where they have a replica of his plane and some other artifacts from his life, as well as other general WWII museum stuff. Cool place, recommend visiting if you're ever in the area.';

'>>61577473
Four .50s in the nose along with the 20mm was more than adequate to kill A6Ms when bouncing them.';

'>>61577473
>How did Richard Bong in the P-38 Lightning manage to shoot so many Zeroes and Hayabusas?
Climb high them drop on them and get away before they can respond then maneuver to do it again? Like, duh.';

'>>61577473
The P-38 had an altitude performance advantage against everything in the pacific it faced. This let it dictate engagements and get the jump on foes. It also had a long combat range, even longer than the Zero's. This made it flexible in CAP and along with radar pickets meant they often were in position to ambush the Japanese. The lightning wasn't agile but it was fast, high flying, long ranged and had a lot of firepower.';

'>Survive WW2 as America's top ace with 40 credited kills and a Medal of Honor
>Become Lockheed test pilot for P-80 shooting star
>Die on your 12th flight because the fuel pump malfunctions and you're too low to the ground for your parachute to work
That fucking blows';

'>>61581398
The late 1940s and 50s were a horrible time to be a test pilot for the USAF. Or a pilot at all really.';

'>>61578556
>Having a culture that values human life over anheroing when you run out of ammunition
translation; chickening out over doing your duty.
that's why all US pilots were dropping their torpedoes miles away in Midway, while it took just one wing of 4 Kates from Hiryu to put two torps into the Yorktown.';

'>>61577473
Speed and hit and runs tactics without being noticed.
In general P-38 maintained >500 km/h during combat. That restricted Zeros to horizontal or decending maneuvers (because its limited engine power) and made their famous sustained maneuverability advantage useless because they couldn't catch the P-38 during high speed climbs.';

'The worst story I heard about a pilot was a former bomber that got transferred to a p-51 and got so zealous in a dogfight he ended up going facefirst into the ground after getting the kill.';

'>>61582007
Strange, I recall most accounts stating that the US won that battle. Maybe there's something to not having ritualized suicide be part of your flight school's core curriculum. :^)';

'>>61582007
>t. historically illiterate retard';

'Driving north out of Chicago past Bong Recreational Park will never fail to get a "heh heh" out of me';

'>>61582151
no thanks to this so-called "life preserving culture" (truly ironic in referencing Midway, where burgers literally zerged the Japanese carriers hoping someone might hit something)';

'>>61582154
t. burger devouring soon-to-be-colonized-by-mexicans muttnigger';

'>>61580852
>replica
pass
>WI
I will have a butterburger in honour of your recommendation however

>>61581398
He joins a number of other well-known veterans who died shortly afterwards, such as Patton

>>61582007
there has to be a better balance between dropping ordnance too far away and being suicidal';

'>>61582214
big difference between killing yourself intentionally and knowing you will probably die but if enough of you make it through the Zeroes and AA fire you can kill the enemy's carriers';

'>>61582007
I wish the B-26s had a better show that time around';

'>>61583509
they weren't equipped or trained for torpedo attack, historically the best way to kill capital ships in WW2
nor could they dive bomb, the other best way
or even skip bomb, without training and without the proper bombs

so all they could do was level bomb, from high altitude, and with small bombs too
which is better than nothing but also next to nothing in effectiveness';

'>>61583534
B-17 did the high level bombing at midway. 4 B-26 tried to use torpedo. One ended up strafing the Akagi and another tried to hit the Akagi with a B-26. 2 were shot down 2 were written off.';

'>>61583585
oh sorry, my bad, I confused the two

well, the B-26 crews were pretty green too weren't they? torpedo bombing actually takes more skill than people think, to estimate target movement and to drop the torp at the right speed and height to avoid it breaking up on contact with the surface';

'>>61582009
Which says something because the A6M had a pretty respectable climb rate.';

'>>61582221
>butterburger

Superior is the broke side of Duluth. They do Juicy Lucies';

'>>61583720
>A Jucy Lucy is a stuffed cheeseburger with the cheese inside of the meat instead of on top, resulting in a melted core of cheese
fuck me
it's like the chocolate lava cake of burgers';

'>>61577473
He did the one thing earth under players cannot do, resisted turn fighting.';

'>>61583627
Climb rate is variable, by definition at sustained max speed the climb rate is 0 m/s.
At 500 km/h, almost max speed, the Zero climbs like a bomber. It simply can't climb and catch the P-38 or F6F at 500 km/h.';

'>>61584194
Wasn't the Zero faster than that?
I haven't read up on the Zero, I'm more familiar with the Hurricane and Spitfire.';

'>>61583602
Not sure if they were inexperienced pilots overall but they didn't have experience torpedo bombing. Torpedoes weren't great and the B-26 was durable but not great for how the torpedoes were supposed to be dropped.

I wasn't sure if the better show anon was referring to the B-26 missing with the torpedoes or the B-26 missing with the B-26. B-26 to the bridge of the Akagi, killing Nagumo and his staff would likely have ironically been one of, if not the, most famous kamikaze attacks. The message informing Yamamoto of that event would likely be very quotable.';

'>>61584794
>Not sure if they were inexperienced pilots overall
The USAAF was inexperienced overall and the B-26s at Midway were a scratch flight assembled from two different squadrons. James Muri, the Akagi strafer, said that they were only briefly trained in the use of the torpedo... which itself was pretty unreliable too.';

'>>61584822
>>61584794
>they didn't have experience torpedo bombing. Torpedoes weren't great
>they were only briefly trained in the use of the torpedo... which itself was pretty unreliable too.';

'>>61584755
Yeah
https://j-aircraft.com/research/rdunn/zeroperformance/zero_performance.htm
http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/japan/a6m2-oct2342.pdf
No aircraft will always be at 100% though especially not in the 40s so speeds can vary in between planes of the same model. Regardless that anon is right and it’s still gonna get outclimbed at higher speeds.';

'>>61584835
>340-350mph
that is indeed combat-winning speed against Hurricanes and F4Fs';

'>>61584864
I meant against Lightnings, should have specified.';

'>>61582214
how many carriers and aircraft did each side lose?';

'>>61584883
don't worry, I understood
I just had Hurricanes and F4Fs in the back of my head as well

the E-model P-38 was said to be able to reach 390mph at 20,000 feet. again, that's combat-winning against the A6M';

'>>61577503
I thought P-38s had turbos';

'>>61585050
>turbo
notoriously, the early P-38 models didn't, which led to horrendous performance (300mph, slightly below the Bf110) and the British to cancel their purchase

the P-38E is the first combat model and had various improvements';

'>>61585065
Not really, a short series without turbo was specifically made for France which didn't wanted it (they ended up in Britain) but P-38s were specifically designed with (large) turbochargers in mind with their two nacelles.';

'>>61577473
Ya just don't lead 'em so much.';

'>>61577473
How he did it? simple:
>To achieve high-speed capability, an airplane will have high wing-loading (gross weight to wing area) and low power loading (gross weight to horsepower). The P-38 had very high wing loading (which provides other benefits, such as when penetrating weather, etc.), higher than anything other than one-off record-breaking and racing planes when it was introduced. And it also had unusually low power loading; in fact it had the lowest power loading of any US design (maybe any design) of WWII. Turbocharging ensured this power loading would remain constant to very high altitudes. This meant the airplane would be fast.';

'>>61587350
But high wing loading would normally degrade turning, climb and ceiling. With such high wing-loading, the P-38 should have been a dog in all but top speed. It wasn't because of two other factors. One is its aspect ratio (span to chord ratio; that is, the relationship of the length of the wing to its width). Another, related, factor is its span loading (ratio of airplane weight to wingspan). In turns or climbs, a plane's drag tends to increase and its speed to decrease. A way to counter this is to increase the wingspan. For any given wing area, increasing the span decreases the chord, providing a higher aspect ratio. For structural and other reasons, most WWII-era fighters had aspect ratios of 6 or less. The P-38 had an amazing aspect ratio of 8, meaning that it could gain the advantage of high wing loading for speed and still not lose in maneuverability, climb or ceiling.';

'>>61587368
>A large wingspan, however, generally degrades a plane's rate of roll because the wing surface is so far out from the fuselage and center of gravity. Making the wing tips narrower by tapering the plan form does a lot to counter this. Normal fighter configurations had a taper ratio of about 2 (the wing tip being only about half as wide as the wing root). The P-38 had a taper ratio of 3. So, you had an airplane that was fast yet a good climber, a good turner and good roller.';

'>>61587386
>But wait--there's more:
>Power has to be converted to thrust thru a propeller. Big powerful engines need big propellers to handle that power, but the diameter of a prop is limited by tip speed. So power has to be absorbed by adding blades or increasing their width. But a prop working harder on a given volume of air has inherent aerodynamic inefficiencies requiring performance compromises. Bottom line being that propeller inefficiency limits the value of engine power. But because the P-38's power was in two "sections" (engines), each with its own propeller, it was able to use its power as efficiently as a much lower-powered airplane operating at lower speeds. And the increased propeller disc area of the two props ensured that the plane's power and thrust would be maximized throughout the maneuver range. This thrust efficiency made for an airplane that leaped into the sky on take-off and could accelerate in the air like a drag racer.';

'>>61585065
Even the XP-38 and YP-38 had turbos.
Most problems at high altitude and during early to mid war were related to the "crude" inlet/carburetor cooling and engine lubrication. Unlike the Merlin those Allison couldn't take advantage of boost pressure because its the inferior or absent intercoolers/aftercoolers. All pre-1942/43 P-38 couldn't achieve full power at high altitude because of carburetor's excessive temp. It was fixed later -but the propeller was the same so they couldn't improve a lot at high altitude- so the P-38 had a short time frame when it was popular despite its cost.

Most shortcomings of US fighters and engines during WWII were related to retards shilling against companies/bureaus doing any unauthorized improvement and blocking any request of improvement. Things like 2 stages superchargers and auxiliary system to take advantage of higher boost pressure weren't allowed for 3-4 years so England and Germany got ahead at high altitude. Also that's why escort fighters/drop tanks were died after the early 1930s and came back just after the late war. Similar reason to the IJN not officially approving any substantial improvement for the Zero.
The P-51 (Merlin) for example was an accident caused by the British asking for more P-40s and then testing a Mustang airframe with the Packard Merlin...';

'>>61587402
> were died
were abandoned*';

'>>61587400
>But wait--there's more:
>Ordinary fighters of the day had a tail length ratio (number of times the wing chord goes into the distance from the center of gravity to the tail surfaces) of between 2 and 2.5. This ratio might be compared to wheelbase on a car. A shorter wheelbase makes for a choppier, less stable ride. The P-38's tail length ratio was a whopping 4. This means it had excellent damping, or the tendency to slow the rate of departure from a trimmed position. This made it a great plane for flying long distances in, with one finger on the wheel, or for instrument flying, or as a steady gun platform or for dropping bombs. The large tail length ratio required a smaller than normal tail surface area because of the increased arm at which the surface worked. This reduced drag and made for a truly excellent flying airplane.';

'>>61587413
>But wait--there's more:
>The width of the horizontal tail surface was determined by the spacing of the booms. The result was a very high aspect ratio for the tail plane. The endplate effect of the two vertical fins and rudder surfaces on the end of the booms produced an aerodynamic apparent aspect ratio that was even higher. This had the effect of providing very rapid changes in force with small changes in the aircraft's angle of attack. This great sensitivity, combined with superb damping, meant that less trimming force was necessary for stability and that there was a wide range of CG position or stability available without
degradation of flying characteristics.';

'>>61587426
>But wait--there's more:
>The high aspect ratio of the horizontal tail also produced narrow chord elevators, which in a turn meant light control forces for maneuver. Ditto for the vertical tail surfaces and rudders. Net effect, the pilot could dance the airplane all over the sky without breaking a sweat, while bellowing out the latest tunes from "Oklahoma!" to drown out the curses in his headphones of any other pilot in some lesser machine that he chose to sky-wrassle with. Because the engines rotated in opposite directions, they produced a symetrical slip stream flow which eliminated the need the carry rudder displacement, thus reducing a source of drag. And there was no change in trim with changes in speed, which was a pure blessing in maneuver combat, er, dogfight. Then there is the Fowler flap system which actually increases wing area, tricycle landing gear, centerline fire guns, plenty of internal fuel, a roomy cockpit..';

'>>61587446
>The P-38 also had an amazing degree of detail refinement compared to other planes. All its external surfaces were smooth with no distrubances from rivets or lap joints, for example. One negative was necessarily small ailerons because of the wing taper, meaning large aileron displacement would be necessary to initiate a roll. That meant high aileron forces. That's why the control wheel was used, and why the later models had aileron boost. Savvy pilots would blip the inside throttle when they wanted a smart roll ASAP. Less savvy pilots did lots of pushups. And there was the cockpit heating and defrosting thing (by the way, it's just as cold at 25,000 ft. in the tropics as in Europe), which did get solved about as soon as it became apparent. Cooling was never as effectively solved.
>But, all in all, a pretty damned good flying machine.
>As pilots of the day said, if Jesus came back as an airplane, he would be a P-38.';

'>>61587467
All sounds good, but some nazi pilots saw them as easy pickin's.';

'>>61587549
Are those the same Nazi pilots that shot down Soviet planes by the hundreds only to lose the air superiority on the eastern front?';

'>>61587549
this was in north africa, mostly because the first pilots didnt have training in twin-engined planes and before they got upgraded
the P-38J and O was definitely able to hold their own against the best fighters of the war, they were just overshadowed by the P-51 by then';

'Guns in the nose, including one of the few cannons on an American fighter, so you just point it and blast';