Even in June of 44 the Luftwaffe had pulled back to defend the German homeland. If you want them to engage in numbers needed to defeat them you have to provide a big enough threat they will respond. That was the bombing of GERMAN targets. The Soviets would not accept American units fighting on the Eastern front. There was enough trouble getting them to allow the few shuttle missions that they did allow.
AHC: P-40 lasts the whole war
- Thread starter JEF_300
- Start date
large guns do not do 'pinpoint fire' Accurate yes, but pinpoint, no. They need good observers. Now maybe that is a use for the P-40
I don't know of a single fighter that used the R-2600. It was supposed to be in the F6F but was quickly changed out for the R-2800. The R-2600 seemed successful in bombers and large aircraft but not in fighters. I'm not sure why but it always seemed to work better in larger aircraft.
marathag
Banned
The deck log of Carmick (DD 493) records:
0647: "German Shore Battery opened fire on this ship."
0650: "German Shore Battery silenced by Main Battery of this ship. No damage resulting from enemy fire."
This seemed a promising opening, but within the half-hour things started to go wrong. Confused by loss of visibility in the smoke, about half the landing craft coxswains lost their way. Pushed along by the strong eastward set of the tidal current, many landed east of their designated objectives; some troops came ashore outside the landing area entirely.
German gunners, defending the five beach exits [so-called five draws or openings in the bluffs facing the beaches between Vierville and Cabourg], pounded the first wave. Demolition teams suffered from German fire and were hampered by the tangled condition of the beaches. The destroyers went dutifully into the second phase of their work, firing at targets behind the beach. It was nearly 0900 before it became clear to the destroyer skippers that something was wrong.
Doyle fired on a German gun overlooking the eastern exit to Colleville. Carmick saw American tanks stalled in the Vierville draw and, in cooperation with the tankers, knocked the first hole in the defenses. Landing craft from follow-on boat waves began milling around off the beach as their coxswains looked for places to land.
--x--
When Frankford, with Captain Harry Sanders aboard, closed the beach about 0900 things began to happen. All destroyers were ordered to the beach to help break through the defenses. This was the hour of crisis. Satterlee was picking off enemy gun emplacements at Pointe du Hoc.1 McCook reported that she knocked one enemy gun off the edge of the cliff, and that another "flew up in the air."2 Vierville was taken by 1100.
Destroyers at Normandy
Destroyers at Normandy Naval Gunfire Support at Omaha Beach By William B. Kirkland Jr. Foreword by James L. Holloway III Edited by John C. Reilly Jr. Naval Historical Foundation Washington, D.C. 1994 Published: Navy Museum Foundation, a project of the Naval Historical Foundation, Washington Navy...
@Driftless Nice picture. Well, radios are much smaller nowadays. Also I never knew that camouflage came in mahogany. 
Errolwi
Monthly Donor
And if the first-gen self-sealing fuel tanks (horse-hair!) have been replaced with fibreglass ones, you don't really miss the fuselage tank.@Driftless Nice picture. Well, radios are much smaller nowadays. Also I never knew that camouflage came in mahogany.
Ford's V-1650 was not RR/Packard V-1650, at least as envisioned by Ford. Main changes were non installation of engine-stage supercharger, all supercharging was supposed to be done by a turbocharger that had two impellers on same shaft (obviously, turbine was on same shaft) - unique 2-stage tubocharging. Being closely-coupled to the engine, turbine blades were hollow so there was internal air cooling. Not having the engine-stage S/C left more power to turn the prop. The engine was DOHC, like the AM-35A and later Mikulin's engines, and not SOHC like Merlin, DB, V-1710 and host of other engines.
All said, the engine was supposed to do more than 1800 HP at more than 25000 ft, but never took fight tests in the finished form; I'm not sure that it was even type tested, or even that it was bench tested by Ford or some institution. Ford started making R-2800 under licence, and ther V12 'gave birth' to the excellent V8 tank engine.
As for the whole Curtis-Wright corp, yes, they were under-performing, to say at least, a few if the projects that eventually matured required a lot of resources spent and host of modifications.
McPherson
Banned
The platform under discussion would have to be the P-60 because the P-40 as it was would have to have a new nose job to cram in the Merlin.
It IS true.
The Merlin engined pieces of crap never were as good as the Pratt powered ones and the Pratt powered ones gave an effective time aloft at cruise of just 200 minutes cruise or a book range of combat radius of action of 60 cruise-15-30 combat-60 cruise minutes of about 300 nautical miles.
QED.
Don Quijote
Banned
Has the fact that OTL Warhawks used Merlins while keeping the P-40 designation passed you by?
Repeating a false claim does not make it true. Obviously the figures vary depending on source, but P-51D range with two 75 (US) gallon drop tanks is typically quoted as about 1650 miles. The P-40F with a 170 gallon slipper tank can manage 1500 miles, so presumably a pair of 75 gallon underwing tanks would give in the region of 1400 miles. It's objectively far more than half, and good enough for long range escort.
McPherson
Banned
Has the fact that the aspiration pathways and HEAT BURDEN from the wrong cowling geometries in the P40Fs 0-20 and R series, escaped my notice? No. Hence why I rejected them as viable. Added to the yaw instability these 1100 CRAP Curtiss built examples exhibited and they were a complete waste of precious time and resources and were back-fitted with Allisons anyway when the USAAF did not show any further interest in the model preferring Jugs and Mustangs. Packard Merlins were better shoved into Mustangs.
So... yeah.
Better check your data. And see my previous remarks.
Last edited:
Don Quijote
Banned
You've given no alternative data, instead relying on ALL CAPS when you want to assert your opinion as if it were fact. If you've got data showing that a Merlin-powered Warhawk has a range less than half that of a Mustang (assuming similar quantities of external fuel), go ahead and provide a source.
As an aside, given the OTL modifications to the nose of the P-40 throughout its career, I don't think it must be redesignated just because of a few more to make it a better fit for the Merlin.
McPherson
Banned
You know something, I linked an article P-60 end derivative that had the numbers and info you needed upthread. Read it. Maybe we can come to an agreement about the P40 as a piece of junk. Til then... ENDIT.
I think you'll will find that 1,500 mile range is a ferry range, not a combat range. No P-40 ever flew escort missions over Germany, from the UK, let alone over Berlin. The P-40F couldn't fly the 450 mile one way mission from Sicily to Salerno to cover the landings, P-38's and Spitfire's had to do that.
Funny really. The OP asks how to make the P40 be effective throughout the war. Then folk queue up to say that there are better aeroplanes they could use. Well yes. But the whole point of the OP is to make the P40 remain effective.
When the USA enters the war almost into the 4th year of the war all it had in mass production was the P39 and P40. Let us assume that the P39 was not adopted so the P40 is it. So there will be efforts to make something better but the P40 will be the main, and then a substantial, part of the war effort. Thus the OP asks what can you do with actual P40's to keep them relevant? Even though we know there will be better designs being worked on.
When the USA enters the war almost into the 4th year of the war all it had in mass production was the P39 and P40. Let us assume that the P39 was not adopted so the P40 is it. So there will be efforts to make something better but the P40 will be the main, and then a substantial, part of the war effort. Thus the OP asks what can you do with actual P40's to keep them relevant? Even though we know there will be better designs being worked on.
McPherson
Banned
Well, this was discussed with the decision to follow an Alexander Kartvelli line of development instead of the one that Berlin chose. As it turns out, the effort was attempted...
but as I explained and as the article I cited above pointedly described with the XP-60E, Curtiss aircraft screwed it up completely, failing to make the Pratt R2800 fit properly into the new nose they slapped onto the old P-40 back end, as well as goofing up the leading edge finish on the laminar flow wing they used to "increase" the speed over the P40D and F starters that they used as the P-60 baseline. What they got as a result was three years too late and it turns out, because of the same problems they had with trying to Merlin the P-40F earlier, the flight characteristics were in yaw, just about unacceptable. (tail control).
Use them as was RTL. Ground attack and medium and low band TACAIR until better comes along for the air push into Japan and Germany proper. Sell them to the Russians who fight mid and low altitude bands on their front, which is suitable for the P-40 and the P-39. Use the aircraft as file fillers in Burma and other secondary fronts late war and keep them away from the high altitude band combat especially in Italy and France 1944-1945.
I'd be tempted to use the XP-46 as a starting point for a revised P-40. Landing gear stowage at least looks to be in the right decade and the ventral radiator is more or less in the right place. It looks a little short-coupled to me so I would lengthen the rear fuselage somewhat. Give it the same V-1710-81 as the late-model P-40s if you are dead-set against Curtiss successfully cowling a Merlin in this ATL. Delete the razorback, add a bubble-canopy and a dorsal fillet. The result isn't unlike the P-46D in the shipbucket profile found a little down the page linked below (although a little longer):
http://shipbucket.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2148&start=190
I'm not suggesting it would be a world-beater but I think there is enough Warhawk DNA in the result to edge the P-40 lineage a little closer to war's end. I'm certainly not recommending the XP-46 as is, I'm well aware it was disappointing.
The other way round would be perhaps to change the war to suite the P-40? The OP suggests the P-40 being used much like the Spitfire. Perhaps specially-modified G4M Bettys are sent on one-way missions to eliminate the B-29 threat at it's source and a simple, rugged interceptor is needed that wouldn't especially need superlative range or high-altitude performance and doesn't deplete the numbers of far more valuable elsewhere P-51s/-47s? Enter the war-weary P-40N. It wouldn't change the shape of the war or anything but it might mean a handful of P-40s are there at/near the end.
http://shipbucket.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2148&start=190
I'm not suggesting it would be a world-beater but I think there is enough Warhawk DNA in the result to edge the P-40 lineage a little closer to war's end. I'm certainly not recommending the XP-46 as is, I'm well aware it was disappointing.
The other way round would be perhaps to change the war to suite the P-40? The OP suggests the P-40 being used much like the Spitfire. Perhaps specially-modified G4M Bettys are sent on one-way missions to eliminate the B-29 threat at it's source and a simple, rugged interceptor is needed that wouldn't especially need superlative range or high-altitude performance and doesn't deplete the numbers of far more valuable elsewhere P-51s/-47s? Enter the war-weary P-40N. It wouldn't change the shape of the war or anything but it might mean a handful of P-40s are there at/near the end.
Don Quijote
Banned
The Warhawk didn't escort raids on Germany from the UK because there were very few Warhawks in the UK. The reason was lack of altitude performance and nothing to do with range. I'll check on the details of air support at Salerno later, but I suspect it's because the P-40s (unlike the Spitfires and P-38s) weren't fitted with larger drop tanks.
McPherson
Banned
Hmmm. Without drop tanks 120 minutes. With drop tanks 200 minutes. Still only adds about 100 nautical miles "radius" or about 400 nautical miles from the midlands and worthless above 15,000 feet.
Sorry, prefer metrics. About 740-750 km max combat radius (40-15-40 at 70% power) and useless above 4,760-70 meters. Top speed is a bolo too. 150 m/s or 335 mph is not competitive.
NEWS | Map and Image Library | Rigzone
Dog of a plane; woof, woof.
Last edited: