Regarding the various comments about throttling back or up a P-38 engine to increase maneuverability I can only repeat that this was not practiced as far as I know. When I was overseas in 44 and 45, flying the J winter thru summer, the policy was to drop tanks and push up MP to 45 inches when German fighters were spotted in a position where an engagement was likely. When you actually went for them, throttle up to WEP, 60 inches or so, rpm all the way up too, up past 3000 rpm. And there it would stay until the engagement was over and you remembered to throttle back. You could easily be at WEP for 20 minutes or more.
Full power all the time was wanted because maneuvering bled off so much speed and altitude. What you wanted was more power and more power. All the prop fighters were underpowered and the only way to keep them turning was to keep them descending. The more power you had available, the slower the descent and the easier the recovery. The 38 seemed to have plenty of power for a prop job and certainly below 15,000 ft. no German fighter could get away from it.
That may sound pretty low, but if you initiated an engagement at 27,000 ft. going into a shallow dive and making a few parring turns, you could easily lose 10,000 ft. Certainly in a 38 without dive flaps you would not want to drop the nose too sharply above 20,000 ft. As krauts got to know the 38 they would tend to dive sharply away from it, convinced it would not follow. But that was just fine, because the 38's job was to protect the bombers. If a gaggle of 109s approached the bombers, escorting P-38s turned to engage them and the 109s bugged out for the deck, the 38's job was done. Those 109s wouldn't have enough gas to climb back up to altitude, chase the bombers and position for an attack. And if they did, the 38s would turn in to them and the process would repeat.
The krauts figured this out pretty soon and knew they had to hit the 38s. They would climb very high (109s, the 190s weren't seen at very high altitudes)and bounce the 38s, who would be cruising at around 220 or so if they hadn't spotted the krauts. Most losses were the result of surprise bounces, the krauts keeping on moving so there was no chance for retaliation. The 38 formation would be broken up, with guys turning looking for the enemy, leaving a way open for other German fighters to hit the bombers.
The only solution to the surprise bounce was to open up the escort fighter formation, have high cover several thousand feet above the bombers and close escort, and keep your head on a swivel. Of course, simply having MORE escorts also helped. (I would wager that was a big problem for the two early 38 groups. They just didn't have enough people to play both the infield and the outfield.) The trick was to spot the Germans as they maneuvered into position for a bounce. That's where having outstanding eyesight mattered, mattered a LOT more than dive flaps or a few more horsepower. One man in a squadron with exceptional eyesight was a real lifesaver. If a high group of krauts was spotted, some of the escort would be tapped to go after them. They didn't have to shoot them down to succeed. All they needed to do was break up their party and force them to dive away.
The 51 could operate at altitudes higher than we usually encountered krauts so had less trouble with being bounced, although, of course, you had to fly at the altitude dictated by the bombers. It had a trickier stall than the 38 so that it was not at all unusual to snap out a tight turn curving in after a kraut.
The first time I lost a 51 in a high speed stall I lost 13,000 ft. before I was able to recover and thought I was going to have to bail out. Man, at that point I HATED that airplane. But by about the third or fourth time that happened, I could recover losing less than 500 ft. and wasn't afraid to push
the plane till it snapped. I'd just get it right back under control and keep going. I got so I could catch it just as it departed and it would only wiggle a bit before getting back down to business. I knew what the airplane was going to do before the airplane did and was ready for it. I didn't even have to consciously think about it. What I had thought was a very big deal was, after a while, no problem at all. The airplane was OK. The pilot just had to learn how to handle it. Stick time does make a difference. To those who have said the 38 was a more complicated airplane than the 51 and so pilots needed more time to master it, I would answer that the 51 could be a contrary beast and a pilot needed time to learn to master IT.
If I was to differentiate between the 38 and the 51, I would say the 38's qualities shone best when it was low and slow. Even a pilot with limited hours in the cockpit could have absolute confidence in it and so push it right into the stall with no fear, even at treetop height. The 51's qualities shone best when it was high and fast. In the upper air at well over 300 per, the German fighters were sitting ducks for a 51. They couldn't outmaneuver it and they couldn't out run it and they couldn't out dive it. That's why you hear these stories about a German pilot simply bailing out as soon as a 51 locked on to him. He knew he had no chance so why hang around for the bullets to hit.
Once the 51 was available in numbers it made sense to shift the 38s to the 9th air force and ground attack. It could easily outfight any Luftwaffe opposition at mid and low altitudes, could carry plenty of bombs and survive ground fire that would have killed the 51 very quickly. The only time I wished I was in a 38 when flying the 51 was attacking ground targets. It wouldn't take much to bring a 51 down, and unlike in an air to air encounter, whether you went down or got home was just a matter of your luck that day. Pilot skill was largely irrelevent, as long as you were good enough to keep the airplane at grass cutting height and didn't fly it into the ground because your reactions were too slow. A 38 on the deck was very stable at speed, and hard to bring down by triple A.
My personal situation was such that I had to lean forward slightly to reach all the controls on the 38 and get a good grip on the control wheel. Because of my body's position, I would tend toward gray out and tunnel vision fairly quicky in hard turns. With the 51, I was able to reach all the controls and have a good grip on the stick while leaning back slightly, so gray out and tunnel vision didn't hit me as quickly. That was one big reason I preferred the 51. Other reasons were that I preferred the high sky for my war, and if I had wanted to follow the 38 thru its war career (assuming I had a choice in the matter) I would have had to have spent it in the 9th shooting up airfields.
No thank you.
George
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