Do you have $6.75M to spare?

[xl_target]

If so, you might be interested in this lovely lady:



You can buy her from these guys: http://www.platinumfighters.com/#!p-38-n505mh/c693

[timmy]

A beautiful machine, XL! They were a world class fighter, equal to anything at the start of WW2. The Lightning was the result of an Army Air Corps specification for an interceptor, a term they came up with so they could differentiate what they wanted from everything else available.

Two aircraft were designed to meet the specification: The Lockheed P-38 Lightning and the Bell P-39 Airacobra.



To meet the Army's specifications, Bell included a number of innovations: By mounting the engine in the center of the aircraft, the plane had less polar inertia and could turn faster. Weight was saved by using the main wing spar for the engine mount. The shaft drive engine permitted a tricycle landing gear with all of it's advantages, and not having a tail wheel enabled Bell to save on weight for the after part of the fuselage. The 30mm cannon was really a waste for air-to-air combat. Chuck Yeager said that it had a very arced trajectory and was worthless unless one was very close to the target. However, the Soviets, who used it for ground support, found it ideal for dealing with tanks.

So Bell tried to meet the specifications by making the plane as small and light as possible around the existing engine.

Kelly Johnson at Lockheed went the other direction: he used two engines. Because the Lightning was designed with counter-rotating engines, it did not have the torque problem that single engine fighters did, and by executing a full power shallow climb, the Lightning could escape from single engine fighters. The concentrated fire of the 4 x 0.50 BMGs and the 20mm copied Hisso cannon in the nose didn't require any convergence, so the Lightning's firepower could take pretty much anything in the air apart at any range. One downside was that the copy of the Hispano Suiza 20mm cannon (probably the finest air combat gun of WW2) was never perfected. While the originals worked very well, all of the American copies had a tendency to jam. Another problem with the Lightning was that in a steep dive, too much speed caused compressibility, which happens as an aircraft nears the sound barrier. This could cause the Lightning to loose control and crash. However the Lightning was very tough and maneuverable. One would not think so from looking at it, but it was. It also had a longer range than most fighters.

One thing to mention here has to do with the interaction of the turbocharger and the Allison V-1710 engine used in both the Lightning and the P-39 (and the P-40, as well). One thing the United States led the world in before and during WW2 was the development of turbochargers (or more correctly, "turbo-superchargers") and this was chiefly due to Dr. Sanford Moss of General Electric. Right after WW1, Dr. Moss began high altitude research on top of Pike's Peak in Colorado, which is over 14,000 ft above sea level. Many American aircraft were turbocharged, which gave them outstanding high altitude performance, but turbocharging was limited to bombers, except for the P-38 Lightning and the P-47 Thunderbolt.

The P-39 and P-40 were supposed to have turbochargers, too, but did not have them. Because of this, both aircraft were notoriously deficient at high altitude. But nobody ever complained about the high altitude performance of the P-38 and its turbocharged Allisons.

The problem here had to do with strategic materials: The chief producer of tungsten, which was necessary to make the exhaust turbine blades of the turbochargers survive high temperature, was Germany. Because tungsten was a strategic resource, only the bombers, the P-38s, and the P-47s got them. The P-51 Mustang, famously, got an engine swap and used Rolls Royce Merlins. While American engine research focused on turbocharging, Rolls Royce had put a lot of development into high altitude supercharging, giving the Merlin a large performance advantage over the Allison at altitude.

The P-38 Lightning is a wonderful aircraft, and one of the few (along with the de Havilland Mosquito) liquid cooled aircraft that I get enthusiastic about. (I am a round motor aficionado!)

Thanks for sharing this, XL. Wouldn't it make a wonderful toy?

[ckkalyan]

Thanks for sharing this xl_target - very lovely!

Maybe Paul Allen will buy it for his collection in Seattle at http://www.flyingheritage.com/

The planes within the Flying Heritage Collection were created at a time when aeronautical discovery had evolved to aviation mastery. Finely crafted by distinguished design bureaus with leading technologies of the 1930s and 1940s, the main emphasis of the collection includes combat aircraft from World War II.

Examples include U.S., British, German, Russian and Japanese types, which were often pitted against each other in great air battles. These rare survivors were researched, hunted down and sometimes recovered from former battlegrounds and airfields. While a few specimens were rebuilt by previous owners, the majority on display have received restoration of the highest authenticity.

In 1998, Paul G. Allen began acquiring and preserving these iconic warriors and workhorses, many of which are the last of their kind. Allen's passion for aviation and history, and his awareness of the increasing rarity of original WWII aircraft, motivated him to restore these artifacts to the highest standard of authenticity and share them with the public.

While the education they provide is significant, we hope you take special pleasure in knowing that these historic aircraft are not meant simply for display in a static museum environment. As part of the Flying Heritage Collection, their destiny is to return once more to the sky, where they were always meant to be.

The Flying Heritage Collection is operated by Friends of Flying Heritage, a 501 (c)(3) organization committed to educating the public about these rare, historic aircraft.

I was fortunate to visit this museum in Mar 2014


With the - AVRO LANCASTER B. MK.I NOSE SECTION


Clandestine Meeting with the - FIESELER FI 156 C-2 STORCH!


The Enormous - B-25J MITCHELL

[xl_target]

CK, Nice photos!
Quite unusual to see so many ww2 aircraft in one place and in such good shape.
You should post more of those photos here.


Tim,
Even though both the USAAF and the RAF considered the P39 a dog, and denigrated its big gun, the Russians loved them.
One the P39's biggest supporters was Alexander Pokryshkin.

In January 1943, his regiment converted to lend-lease Bell P-39 Airacobras, which despite a persistent myth the Soviets never used in the ground attack role. Soviet pilots liked this aircraft, and found it quite competitive with the Messerschmitt Bf-109 and superior to the Focke-Wulf FW-190 at the low air combat altitudes common on the Eastern Front. Pokryshkin really enjoyed the 37 mm cannon's destructive firepower, and the two upper nose-mounted .50 caliber machine guns, synchronized to fire through the propellor (airscrew), in addition to the pair of .30 caliber machine guns mounted in each wing, outside the propeller arc and therefore unsynchronized. He claimed that the cannon's trigger, positioned at the top of the joystick, was impossible to push without moving the pilot's hand, which made the aircraft deviate from the gunsight, so finally he had his regiment's aircraft rigged so that a single button simultaneously fired cannon and machine guns. In his memoirs he describes many enemy aircraft immediately disintegrating upon being hit by the salvo. Pokryshkin and his regiment were repeatedly asked to convert to new Soviet fighters such as the La-5 and Yak-3. However Pokryshkin found La-5's firepower insufficient and personally disliked Yakovlev so he never did.

Combat record
The most accepted figures of his combat record are:

560 combat missions
156 air-to-air engagements
Official score: 59 enemy aircraft shot down personally, and 6 together with other pilots
Note: based on Pokryshkin's memoirs and personal notebooks, his score stands above 100. The Soviet air force did not officially confirm kills whose wreckage could not be found, thus many aircraft shot down over enemy territory were never confirmed.

Other factor must be taken into account to solve such differences: Pokryshkin, as most other Soviet aces, also engaged in the common practice of giving his kills to fallen comrades. Each kill was rewarded with a substantial monetary bonus, and on the day of a pilot's death all regiment kills would often be credited to him in order to give his family some support. Note that the vast majority of Pokryshkin's kills have been scored before and during 1943 (when the quality of the Luftwaffe's airmen was higher), and since the summer of 1944 he had been absolutely forbidden to engage in air combat (and he sometimes disobeyed the order)

Quotes from here

[timmy]

Yes, XL, the Soviets liked them. IIRC, Chuck Yeager said that they were pretty good at low altitude too, which makes sense.

I found this interesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M4_cannon From this page:

The 37mm cannon was disliked by pilots for its drooping trajectory. In a filmed interview, Air Force pilot Chuck Yeager likened it to "throwing a grapefruit".

The M4 was sometimes used against soft ground targets but was primarily for air-to-air combat on the Eastern Front at which duty it was highly effective. The Soviets did not use the P-39 for tank-busting. Soviet pilots appreciated the M4's reliability but complained of its low rate of fire (three rounds per second) and small magazine size (30 rounds).

This squares with your quote re: using the 37mm for air to air combat. I was surprised to see that it wasn't used for tank busting. Somewhere I read that the British replaced the 37mm with the 20mm Hisso.

Here's an interesting page on the 37mm: http://www.p63kingcobra.com/m4_37mm_auto_cannon.html

At 2000 ft/s, this thing isn't going to shoot like a 220 Swift.

[brihacharan]

Hi xl_target / timmy /kalyan,
> Thanks guys for sharing - very interesting & informative!
> Kalyan - Looks like you are there to take delivery of that magnificent bird
Briha

[essdee1972]

Great pics! Thanks guys! Now if only I could persuade someone to hand me 7 mils "donation"!!

CKK, Paul Allen is the Microsoft guy, right?

XL, this gesture is so ........... awesome:

Pokryshkin, as most other Soviet aces, also engaged in the common practice of giving his kills to fallen comrades. Each kill was rewarded with a substantial monetary bonus, and on the day of a pilot's death all regiment kills would often be credited to him in order to give his family some support.

Moving, really!

[ckkalyan]

CKK, Paul Allen is the Microsoft guy, right?

Yes essde1971, you are correct he is 'one' of the three founders - if I am not mistaken! He used to own, until recently again, if I am not mistaken - a small, pleasure boat called the Octopus - Octopus is a 414 foot (126 m) megayacht You know how people trade up on small stuff when they want a bigger one?

Looks like you are there to take delivery of that magnificent bird

Right-on brihacharan-Ji - That particular bird - the one that I approached - was the 'one that got away' or even the 'one that flew over the cuckoo's nest'

timmy thanks for sharing that Lightning information - very nostalgic!

Thanks xl_target for your invitation - my finger was on the trigger! Here are some more to share! I had a wonderful 45 minutes at the warbird museum - just wandering around with my mouth open!


This boat is just out of the Dox-Lox action, Single Barrel Canal System in Seattle


A view of the The - Dox-Lox ejection system!


Recurved Hammer at the Dox-Lox


The Eagle has Landed - at least the Nose Cone + a Bit


One helluva huge rotary engine - Growl!!


Do you see the Mittlewerk V2- Rocket in the background?


The V-2 rocket was the first man-made object to fly into outer space. Designed by pioneer rocket scientist Werner von Braun, the V-2 was a great technological breakthrough used as a terror weapon by Hitler's Germany in the last year of World War II

[timmy]

Great pictures, CK. The Lancaster and Mitchell were great planes, and the Storch is an amazing machine! The locks are very interesting. Are those on Lake Washington?

[ckkalyan]

Thanks timmy

The Hiram M. Chittenden Locks, built in 1911 and often nicknamed the Ballard Locks, provides a link for boats between the salt water of Puget Sound and the fresh water of the Ship Canal, which connects eastward to Lake Union and Lake Washington.

Tourists and locals enjoy watching the parade of sailboats, motorboats, tugs, barges and yachts passing through, as the locks' water levels are adjusted to allow their safe passage.

Another popular spot is the fish ladder, built to allow salmon to pass between fresh and salt water, and to navigate the locks. Glass panels below the water line make it possible to watch the fish as they swim through the ladder.

http://www.myballard.com/ballard-locks-seattle/

[ckkalyan]

Unusual, 7 Ton, 16 Foot High, Bronze of Lenin in Fremont, Seattle, WA

The sculptor, Emil Venkov's rendition of his vision of Lenin as a violent revolutionary; not merely an intellectual and theoretician. There is quite an interesting story behind how the the statue ended up in the USA http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/9056

[timmy]

Thanks, CK. Now I have an idea where you were at with those pictures.

The Lenin statue is interesting! It looks like someone painted his hand red in the photo. That's quite a novelty to sell one's house for!