Who Likes Aircraft ?

[69 Sleeper Bee]

 

[barnfind]

Two workers at the Vought Sikorski Aircraft factory assemble a Pratt & Whitney R-2800 engine, the type used in the Vought F4U 'Corsair' sighter aircraft, Stratford, CT, March 1943

 

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[Duckmanreno]

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Malta ?

 

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yes

 

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[Detective D]

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P39 is one of my favorites. Very interesting design. From what I have read in documentation and from interviews with pilots, it handled well but was not good at high altitude, lost power to climb. One pilot mentioned he wished they would have tried a supercharger on it to fix the altitude problem because at lower altitudes it was a powerful aircraft in combat.

 

[69 Sleeper Bee]

 

[69 Sleeper Bee]

 

[69 Sleeper Bee]

 

[Photon440]

P39 is one of my favorites. Very interesting design. From what I have read in documentation and from interviews with pilots, it handled well but was not good at high altitude, lost power to climb. One pilot mentioned he wished they would have tried a supercharger on it to fix the altitude problem because at lower altitudes it was a powerful aircraft in combat.

The original design did have a two speed turbo-supercharger, but when sent for evaluation to NACA, they recommended ditching the turbo to get rid of the side scoops, claiming they caused too much drag. Scoops shown here on the prototype.

The Soviets still made good use of the 5,000 examples they received, managing 6,000 kills against German aircraft. They also modified the fighter, removing the wing guns to increase roll rate and maneuverability.

 

[Detective D]

The original design did have a two speed turbo-supercharger, but when sent for evaluation to NACA, they recommended ditching the turbo to get rid of the side scoops, claiming they caused too much drag. Scoops shown here on the prototype.
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The Soviets still made good use of the 5,000 examples they received, managing 6,000 kills against German aircraft. They also modified the fighter, removing the wing guns to increase roll rate and maneuverability.

Guess they should have listened to the pilots then instead. I had read it was successful in Russia. I take any wartime statistics coming from them with a grain of salt though. No reason to doubt it's success, but I suspect between German propaganda and Russian propaganda of the time either no planes or all the planes were shot down haha.
That is why I enjoy hearing the stories from the vets that lived that war. Once they got to be old men, they had a lot less reason to fib about what happened than a government during wartime would have. I haven't personally heard a lot of testimony from Russian war pilots, or soldiers for that matter, so all we have is the official numbers at this point unless there is some trove of interview info out there.

A side track as an example- the official report in the pacific is that the battleships sunk in pearl harbor crossed the T and blew away the Japanese battleships. back when youtube was not a controlled money platform and things like geocities web pages existed, there was tons and tons of veteran testimony in both written and video format about all sorts of things in the war. While they all smiled at the official story of the battleships getting revenge, they all said it was dozens of PT boats sending torpedoes into the sides of the Japanese fleet that literally could not turn in the straight to avoid them that took the fleet down. In war though, it made a much better moral booster to say our mighty fleet both outgunned, and out-sailed the enemy for total victory. That is not to say our gunships didn't get their licks in of course.

History is an interesting thing, that phrase about the winners writing it is usually true, and so many details get lost as people pass on and their stories go with them. it's really too bad so much documented first hand information was lost despite the efforts to put it in the public on the internet. We can't go back and ask those soldiers for their stories anymore.

 

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