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The Red Bull P-38 Lightning

I read a story some years back that said that the P-38s great advantage was the placement of its guns. In conventional fighters of the time, the guns were out on the wings. Pilots of the time had to learn to judge distance and angles to hit enemy planes.
The P-38s guns were directly in front of the pilot. All he had to do was point the nose at what he wanted to shoot.
 
The P-38 can easily fly on one engine albeit with lower performance.

The P-38 is quieter than other warbirds since the engine exhaust is muffled by the turbo superchargers.
 
Cedric said:
Just ran across this short bit on Red Bull's restoration of the P-38, my favorite WWII aircraft. The P-51 gets much deserved attention, but keep in mind our top two aces in WWII flew P-38s.
Click to expand...
While I am a P-51 fan (NUTHIN' sounds like a Merlin at full song!) I have to admit that the P-38 is a drop-dead gorgeous machine, especially in "Bare Metal" as that one is. It's one of the few warbirds I haven't seen close-up and I would dearly love to rectify that and see one in person some day.
 
Talyn said:
The P-38 can easily fly on one engine albeit with lower performance.

The P-38 is quieter than other warbirds since the engine exhaust is muffled by the turbo susuperchargers.
Click to expand...
The reason I asked is because my dad had a prop failure and had to bail out of a P-51. I was just wondering if he'd have been lost if he had a prop failure in a twin-engine P-38 instead.

I guess he had a pretty long hike, and then I got MY picture on the front page of the LA Times. Only because I've always been so handsome.
 
I did a bit of digging and ran across some really interesting drawings on Google. If you search using the phrase:

"p-38 lightning cross-sectional drawing"

you will find enough to keep you busy for a good while. It's really interesting to see how they utilize every cubic foot for something, absolutely no space wasted anywhere.

3f99be5cb1272f64326dd1ac16702baa.jpg
 
P.S. Charles Lindbergh's one and only enemy kill in WWII came while flying a P-38 while assisting a Lightning group in the Pacific. IIRC it was a Japanese cargo plane.
 
That was so kool...

With complete sarcasm:
Oh, no !! He was a civilian ! He couldn't possibly have done that !He was only there to instruct pilots into maximizing fuel range !!

Can you even imagine that happening now ? The media would call him a terrorist
 
SCraig said:
I did a bit of digging and ran across some really interesting drawings on Google. If you search using the phrase:

"p-38 lightning cross-sectional drawing"

you will find enough to keep you busy for a good while. It's really interesting to see how they utilize every cubic foot for something, absolutely no space wasted anywhere.

3f99be5cb1272f64326dd1ac16702baa.jpg
Click to expand...

Yes, one reason the P-38 was more expensive and complicated to build. The J & L models actually simplified things a bit compared to the earlier ones.
 
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