horseback

While the ambient temps are problematic, it will make taxiing and takeoff in the Spit Mk I and Hurricane much more convenient. Those birds overheated pretty quickly, especially in an English summer. Oh. Wait... cheers horseback

Easily the best fifty bucks I've ever spent. cheers horseback

SIGH! My post was in response to comments about the versions DCS will be providing us shortly. Still with Greg. Historical references, specifically including the 4th FG's war diary, state that the 200 gallon belly tank was actually (a) unpressurized and essentially useless at altitudes the early P-47 was effective at; it could only be half filled and was reportedly dropped well before reaching 15-20,000 ft (b) unreliable and prone to failure, breaking fuel lines or just falling off during takeoff during the few times from late July to early September that they were used. © had a complex shape, implying extra cost and limited availability (d) was replaced in September 1943 with the more effective paper belly tanks First version of the Jug with wing pylons (and plumbing for drop tanks) was the D-15-RE/RA; first examples reaching the 56th FG in March of 1944 (per Roger Freeman's Thunderbolt (1978 ) and confirmed from dated photographs in various printed sources). The date is further confirmed by the fact that the Jugs with pylons all have non-white noses, which strongly indicates that they were available after the March 1944 8th Fighter Command orders assigning nose band colors by Group. D-23-RE (RA=Evansville, Indiana) and D-22-RE (RE=Farmingdale, Indiana) were the first versions delivered with paddle blade props; Hamilton Standard from Evansville, and Curtiss Electric from the Farmingdale plant. The improvement in performance, in climb and lower alt acceleration were considered so critical that new props and installation kits were shipped to the 8th AF starting in Dec 1944, first examples going to the 56th FG. D-25-RE/D-26-RA were indeed the first bubbletops with extra fuel capacity, the dash numbers apparently differ because the Evansville plant's products came with Hamilton Standard, and the Farmingdale plant offering came with Curtiss Electric props, but the aircraft were based on the same orders and were produced at the same time. Big changes came with the D-28-RA/RE; the Hamilton Standard props at Evansville were discontinued and Curtiss Electric props are installed at both plants; from photo examples, these may have been the asymmetrical types-there appears to be a significant 'bulge' above the cuffs on the trailing edges of the props. D-30-RE/RA appears to be the version we get from DCS; there are significant changes including the elimination of the ring and bead sights we don't see in the preview videos we are currently seeing, the major additions appear to be blunt nosed ailerons, electrical release for external stores, and a rearview mirror for the canopy, ending the midnight raids on RAF Spitfire bases for their coveted externally mounted rearview mirrors. These were also equipped with 'stock' dive brakes. Having done a few retrofits and upgrades on various systems and vehicles as a defense contractor, plus knowing that there definitely were retrofit dive brake kits for the P-38Js in the ETO, it seems more than probable that earlier versions of the P-47 were retrofitted with similar dive brake kits well before the D-30s arrived in theater. The P-47s didn't need the dive brakes near as badly as the Lightning, but it was a time of abundance for the 8th and 9th Air Forces. Bodenplatte essentially ended effective organized German fighter operations; most of the kills credited by 8th AF after that are ground kills, which we now know were mostly a waste of time, ammo and men's lives. P-47D production appears to have ended with the introduction of the ultra long ranged P-47N for the Pacific Theater in late 1944/early 1945; P-47Ds were used in the Southwest Pacific and CBI, but not much liked. As for production up to VJ Day, Republic's orders to halt production for the P-47N came literally the day after the Japanese signed the documents in Tokyo Bay, and the US started handing out the the excess Thunderbolts still in Europe like candy to the reconstituting Allied air forces; I know that Italy and France got a few squadrons' worth, along with air forces in South & Central America. Much of the excess in the USA were either converted to National Guard or Air Reserve units for a while, but most ended up in scrap yards in southern Arizona along with the thousands of P-40s, Mustangs, B-17s and B-24s that were suddenly obsolete. Most were melted down by the late 1950s, but the survivors could still be had for shockingly low prices as late as the mid-1970s (my Dad was offered a low hours P-51D with a crated spare engine for $10,000 in 1969--if my Mother hadn't put her foot down...) cheers horseback

First of the bubbletops were delivered to the 8th AF in May, 1944 a year after the Battle of the Atlantic was won. Without the submarine threat in the Atlantic, a large part of the small jeep carrier production was diverted to the primary task of transporting aircraft to the front; an aircraft fuselage represents a lot of semi-empty space that could have gone to more 'solid' weight being carried in the hull of the ship, so this freed up a lot of larger cargo ships for other needs--food supplies in Britain improved quickly during that period, along with all the other stuff that armies, navies and air forces run on. At the same time, American industrial production had finally sorted itself out which meant that aircraft production really kicked into high gear; parts arrived in sufficient numbers and on time, rail transport reached peak efficiency, etc, etc. Consider how the first Merlin Mustangs were produced in late May of 1943, and that it took until December of that first year for the first USAAF and RAF units to enter combat, and another four months before the 8th AF had a significant portion of its fighter groups converting to the Pony. By May of 1944, the logistics problems were practically solved, and time it took for a fighter built in Illinois or Indiana (or Dallas or LA) to reach its intended Fighter Group was much, much shorter than it had been in May of 1943. It took even less time for retrofit kits for things like dive brakes to make it to frontline units, which means that the actual differences between aircraft delivered as D-40 and D-30 were fewer than you'd think. In some cases, the earlier dash 30s were upgraded to D-40 standards before the first D-40s reached that combat unit. Installing a few pair of 'zero length' rocket launcher stubs on the wings was probably less work than you might think (especially if the crews doing the upgrades were doing them every day for weeks on end). In the case of the P-47, the bubbletops represented a significant improvement in range and performance, so combat units grabbed 'em and discarded the razorback models, which couldn't be retrofitted with the greater fuel capacity or field of vision. The LW still showed up in numbers from time to time right up to Bodenplatte, and there were medals and scores to pile up when they did. The 9th AF inherited a lot of those discarded razorbacks on the principal that ground support required less range and all-around vision than long range escort. Hence, you still see a lot of 9th AF razorbacks in early 1945. cheers horseback

Having spent some time on the decks of USN ships at sea and in port, I can say that it is almost always windy on the deck of a ship of any meaningful size, especially at sea. A carrier deck 60 ft up, making way on the ocean will have a breeze at least equal to the sum of the ship's speed and the prevailing wind. When launching or receiving aircraft, the carrier will be pointed into the wind and making its best speed, so winds of 45+ knots from bow to stern are about the minimum you should expect. cheers horseback

A couple of notes about 'retrofitting': any time a combat group got a new model of aircraft after about winter of '43/'44, it also received kits for the upgrades to be put in their existing aircraft (where possible). There were reportedly a few 'C' models still flying combat in early 1944 with water injected engines and wide bladed props--if your assigned aircraft had a particularly 'sweet' airframe or engine, or for whatever reason, it just flew faster or handled better than other aircraft you were offered, you'd stick with your original as long as possible. As for Hamilton props, there were three different flavors of paddleblade props; the Hamilton Standard, the Curtiss Electric symmetrical, and the Curtiss Electric asymmetrical versions. As far as I know, the performance differences were negligible, and some of my sources say that the Hamilton Standard props were put on in the Farmingdale Indiana plant, starting with the razorback D-22-RE version until the D-28-RE, when they went to Curtiss Electric props. Evansville started producing their Jugs with wideblade cuffed Curtiss Electric props starting with the D-23-RA models (also razorback). Curtiss props feature cuffs and a distinctly 'pointy' prop boss; from Phil's video, the aircraft he was flying was equipped with a wide-bladed symmetrical Curtiss prop. I thought that the prop boss looked a bit too fat, from the limited views I had of it. cheers horseback

PS: Thunderbolts below 20,000 ft (approx 6000m) before May of 1944 were considered 'easy meat' for an Me 109 or FW 190A; it took an exceptional pilot to be successful at low altitudes before the paddleblade props became common. The Mustang was considered by pilots who had just transitioned to the P-51 from the Jug to be better than the 190 or 109 'right down to the deck'. Some of the advantage early on can be given to the Germans' caution dealing with an unfamiliar opponent, but a 'light' Mustang that burned off a big chunk of it's fuel getting to Germany is a lot quicker than the 'book' figures for one with a full combat load would suggest, and it was usually believed to be superior long after the Germans thought that they had it figured out. The Thunderbolt we're getting is nearly a top of the line model, but I still will prefer to fly it above 25K against the Dora and 109K, which are later war aircraft modeled without the flaws common to the wartime production. cheers horseback

Liberty ships were not produced until after the United States declared war, and until the Battle of the Atlantic was won (essentially May of 1943), a lot of them were being sunk, along with their cargoes. Aircraft, even crated aircraft, take up a LOT of precious deck space, and Liberty ships weren't that big (500ft?); bigger transports or jeep type carriers were often used to transport aircraft especially once the U-boats were mostly nullified. Before that, P-47s and their replacement parts came in dribs and drabs to England. IN 1939, the US was still recovering from the Depression, and Congress was not at all interested in getting sucked into a European war (a lot of politics there, so let's just leave it at that). The US did not enter the war until the second week of December 1941, and we still weren't ready. It took the better part of a year to get anything organized industrially, and with the Japanese in the Pacific, the U-boats in the Atlantic and the competing military commands all wanting everything --the same everythings-- at the same time, everywhere in the world, some important details were inevitably overlooked or delayed. In any case, the thousands of drop tanks you think should have been available were never made, much less shipped to England in 1943. The Pacific war would have sucked them up regardless, since it was even more distance intensive than the ETO at that time. In the spring of 1943, the P-47 was for all intents and purposes, an experimental aircraft, and still pretty buggy. The aircraft themselves were hard to get, but less hard to get than Lightnings, which all went to TORCH and North Africa. Most of the American fighter pilots in England were not very experienced or as well trained as the ones who followed them, and two of the three groups assigned to fly the Jug in combat were used to another fighter entirely--the 78th had come to Britain as a P-38 group and was stripped of all of its aircraft and most of its pilots and literally had to re-constitute in England, and the 4th was mainly composed of former Eagle Squadron RAF trained Spitfire drivers. Only the 56th FG was used to and trained up on the P-47, and they had their teething problems too. Read Zemke's memoir about it; he was free-er to innovate than the 4th FG, which had the brass breathing down their necks more often, being closer to London and supposedly more experienced. Zemke also mentions the troubles he had with his first support/maintenance commander, who wasn't getting the job done and was senior to Zemke, although nominally under his command. Zemke had to fire him before his group starting being effective, but it hurt him politically. Now, as for your contention that the enemy the Mustangs saw was "vastly different" than the enemy the P-47 saw, I must respectfully disagree. The first three P-51 groups began operating by the end of Big Week, and only one of them (the 4th) were combat veterans in, again, a largely experimental aircraft. The Luftwaffe had had a long rest due to the exceptionally hard winter of '43-'44, and had good reason to believe that the American daylight bomber offensive was stalled if not defeated. Big Week was hard on them, but the 8th AF took some very heavy losses too. Then those three Mustang groups (about 150 aircraft, less the mechanical aborts) inflicted heavy losses on the veteran fighter corps of the Luftwaffe over the next three months; this is the period that Galland identifies as the time he lost most of his veteran leaders over Germany--mostly out of the reach of the P-47s and Spitfires. This is historical fact; a relatively small group of men and machines did most of the damage to the Luftwaffe fighter corps in that critical time, and most of those men were 'rookies' flying longer and further than single engine fighters had ever flown into combat before against a well equipped and trained opposition (yeah the Zero flew similar distances, but not against a prepared and comparable opponent in 1941/2). They were the ones who took out most of the 'seasoned' opposition you talk about, plus they also practically wiped out the daytime zerstorer units most dangerous to the bombers. The P-38 groups were not remotely as effective and they suffered a lot more mechanical attrition. Also, they kept losing their COs, which also affected performance & morale. Timing is everything in war, and the P-47 had its virtues, but like the Corsair in the Pacific (or the P-38 everywhere), it really took too long to achieve its potential. Sorry about the range thingie; I don't have the time or patience to memorize the charts, but I am quite familiar with veteran pilots' descriptions of the problems they faced in southern England in 1943. cheers horseback

There are just some things that are impossible to simulate without a moving cockpit and a force feedback type stick (and rudder pedals)--all well beyond the financial reach of the average flight simmer. The DCS modeled trim delay may or may not be accurate, but in the real aircraft, I would expect the change to be 'felt' before it becomes significant enough to show on the needle and ball. Small controller trim knobs or levers make it extra hard to be precise and stay ahead of the airplane. A lot of the sensitivity issues we get with the Mustang are due to the short throw of the joystick controllers we have, so an extension is supposed to be good for some aircraft that require very small adjustments, like the Mustang or Spitfire. I got a 20 cm Virpil curved extension for my Warthog recently, but it sits a bit too high on my current rig for comfort and I'm trying to figure out a way to mount it without too much surgery on my Openwheeler (which I cannot recommend enough) seat & frame. Ideally, I'd want to be able to switch back and forth, according to what I'm flying and still have the stick's handle at about the same height. The manufacturer has advertised an upcoming adaptor kit for extended sticks, but then the virus shutdown took effect... A small plywood platform may have to be designed, if it can be anchored properly. cheers horseback

I'm sticking with my trusty Warthog; the throttle & prop pitch will be on the large axes, as with the P-51D, and the turbosupercharger/boost will be the grey slider below; the mixture will be assigned to a thumb switch on the side. I expect the trim assignments to be more critical; America's Hundred Thousand describes the Jug as needing a fair amount of trim adjustment, although the trims are not as 'sensitive' as on the P-51. cheers horseback

Arnold issued that order in response to the requirements of Congress, which feared that drop tanks would be 'provocative' to the Axis Powers, or worse, give Roosevelt the idea that he should intervene in Europe. One of the reasons that the P-38 had such a large internal fuel supply was to get around this law. Your estimates only work if the P-47s are flown in a direct line, independently climbing at a very gradual rate. You couldn't do that in the spring and early summer of 1943; any flight in southeastern England was credited as combat hours at that time because the Luftwaffe was known to still occasionally drop by for a visit. There is no allowance for climbing through the near omnipresent overcast (I know this is true, because I lived in East Anglia for four years) in formation, where three of the four aircraft are often adjusting their throttles to conform to their leader while keeping each other in sight, the extra fuel burned just climbing to an altitude where you are competitive with the FWs and Mes, and then orbiting in the position where the bombers you are escorting are supposed to be--and for a long while in '42-'43, the bomber groups were very sloppy (or, if you prefer, criminally negligent) about getting where they were supposed to be on time while their escorts were burning precious fuel. A lot of young men died or were captured because the bomber leaders routinely gave no thought to the requirements of the fighters who would be protecting them; this ended by the winter of 1943/44, not least because a few high ranking bomber group officers literally got punched out in London by fighter pilots there on weekend passes. Mustangs used significantly less fuel doing these things, and it was considered more competitive with the enemy fighters at all altitudes. Here I agree, but a large part of the prejudice against the P-47 is due to the simplified history so many are taught--and in some cases, the only information you get is from the mini-history included with the assembly directions of the model airplanes a lot of us built as kids. Turns out that reality is much more complex. cheers horseback

Oh yes; the author ignores a few basics, not least of which is that 'available in early 1943' isn't exactly the same as 'available in useful numbers in England'. You may have a design and a few examples in the States, but the cost of materials and manufacture might conflict with production of other war materials that have a higher priority, either for the materials and manpower, or for the shipping space needed to get it to England. He apparently seems ignorant of the fact that the '200 gallon' drop tank he mentions constantly was not pressurized; this might be due to the fact that Republic omitted that info when they put it into the manuals, or that what they thought would work turned out to be impractical in the field. This according to Escort To Berlin, by Fry & Ethell, adapted almost directly from the 4th Fighter Group's official war diary. I don't know if it's still in print; my copy dates from 1980, and I got it from the San Diego Air Museum's library overstock sale sometime after that (when my former wife wasn't looking). In any case, the first use of the tank was in late July of 1943, by the 4th FG, which obtained their first examples on the 17th. The first set of tanks were used to instruct ground crew in their care and installation over the first few days, then expended as the pilots of the group practiced flying with them and then in dropping them (you do not want to drop a new type tank for the first time in combat--I don't care how many times the company test pilots did it over Long Island). Photos show a bulbous conformal type of tank, apparently metal. Being unpressurized, these tanks could not be used at higher altitude, could not be fully filled and generated significant drag. Just looking at it, I would expect that they were expensive and hard to make too, due to the complicated shape. Escort to Berlin describes them as unreliable; the tanks could fall off or the fuel lines could disconnect during takeoff. In any case, they were soon replaced by the pressurized paper 108 gallon and 75 gallon teardrop tanks, in September and late August of that year. I cannot comment on availability at that point, but the 75 gallon examples look pretty similar to the belly tanks you see mounted on P-40s of that same time period (but preparations for TORCH were underway, and they may have been diverted--I see photos of paper tanks almost exclusively after September, and the P-40 is never seen with paper tanks). Bear in mind that at this point, Merlin Mustangs are beginning to arrive in England; the first production models came out in late May --early June in Los Angeles, and had to be transported the 2500 miles across the US to be carried via ship to British ports (most often, Liverpool). Mustangs are cheaper by a wide margin, they did not use the expensive turbosuperchargers that were also needed for the heavy bombers (think priorities and politics), and they had an impressive range and speed at all altitudes, plus a better climb and acceleration than the concurrent model of the P-47D (without the vaunted paddleblade props). Possibly more important, by all accounts, the MUstang was easier to fly and master than the P-47. While the Mustangs are re-assembled and tested in Britain (again, you cannot take the company test pilot's word for anything you have to use in combat), Europe was experiencing some pretty bad weather, limiting flying time and missions over France and western Germany. A new group arrives and is assigned to learn to fly the Mustangs, and the new fuselage tank kits arrive and are installed by late December. During this time, I find no reliably dated photos of 8th Air Force combat P-47s with anything more than the centerline mounted tanks; there are some examples of the flat-pack 150 gallon tanks with the 56th FG, but no wing pylons for additional tanks. The 4th FG flew P-47s through Big Week in late February '44, and the diary makes no mention of anything but belly tanks. Apparently, the 56th FG got the lion's share of both the new paddleblade prop kits around December to February of '44, but the other P-47 groups had to wait for more kits or the later production models to become available, around late March or April, by which time the 4th had converted to Mustangs, becoming the third P-51 group in the ETO, all of which had converted or retrofitted to the 85 gallon fuselage tank. These can be identified by the white cross above the data plate stencil blow and behind the exhaust stacks on the port (left) side of the fuselage. Photos of razorback Jugs with wing pylons that I can reliably date to pre-D-Day are few; all of them have the colored noses assigned by the 8th AF Fighter Command in March '44. I found no 8th AF P-47s with white noses and wing pylons, even with the blatantly favored 56th FG. That group apparently received retrofit kits for the pylons, because I see many Olive Drab razorbacks with pylons, and the first production models with pylons were delivered unpainted, the first example reaching the 56th in March of '44. From all this I had to conclude that "someone" decided that the finite supply of high octane aviation fuel refined in the US and shipped at no small expense in lives and ships to Britain, the Med, and Russia was best used for escort from England by Mustangs. cheers horseback

It was a matter of timing and logistics; Mustangs and Lightnings had the range to reach Berlin by December of 1943, and the decision to do so was limited by available numbers, so rather than risk a massacre if they sent them in penny packets, they waited until March when they had the numbers to make a difference. P-47Ds with centerline tanks couldn't reach Berlin until the wing pylon kits trickled into Britain in spring '44 (late March-early April) and were promptly hogged by the 56th FG (who also got all the first paddle blade prop kits back in January). These first few Jugs could reach Berlin if they carried the new bigger paper tanks, but the numbers of those were limited at first, and the Mustang groups got first dibs because they were already doing it. All of the new airplanes and new modification kits made in America had to be transported across the Atlantic, usually by ship (and having made the trip that way, I can tell you it isn't an overnight delivery situation, even today), and once in Liverpool, had to be unpacked and assembled, tested and only then did the bean counters (grudgingly) allow them to be delivered to the combat groups. I don't want to denigrate the Jug at all here, but there's a saying that the pioneers get the arrows long before they get the credit for doing it before anyone else. The Mustang and Lightning did it when it was the most difficult, and that's why they get the most credit. Of course, I am eagerly looking forward to getting the P-47 I was promised when I chipped in $50.00 back in the very beginning of this project over six years ago. cheers horseback

The trim delay is a PITA, no doubt about it. In the sim, I find that if you aren't using pronounced curves on your axis assignments, tiny adjustments in your stick or rudder pedals can get a sudden response if they are too abrupt. I'm experimenting with adjusting the curves and saturation on my trim axes as well. They don't need to be set to straight lines, and I doubt that you would need 'full' trim for the Mustang in the sim. My rig uses an old Logitech Wingman force feedback driving wheel as elevator trim with the wheel mounted right beside my left hip; with no power applied to the controller the wheel stays where you put it, but the trim on the Mustang is extremely sensitive and you just have to practice and learn to anticipate the amount of trim wheel movement you need. (when you've been simming for as long as I have, old controllers get re-purposed) The same goes for the rudder trim; very, very sensitive and with the delay, hardly worth the trouble. I'm considering whether I should try to put a much bigger dial/knob on my trim pots with some kind of 'click' mechanism to give me some kind of idea of how much trim I've dialed in without having to look at the trim knob on the monitor or the actual one on my side panel. Reading wartime and early post war descriptions of the P-51 though, an awful lot of the pilots who flew it in combat seemed to think that trim (in the Mustang) was generally unnecessary compared to say, the P-47, or P-39s and the P-40s which most of them trained on; the stick and rudder forces were considered (almost too) light for the era, and rarely needed large or sudden movements. In addition, the real stick didn't have centering springs like most of the sticks simmers use, so there wasn't the kind of centering stick pressure you get in the sim when you aren't trimmed 'just so.' You more or less 'felt' the sweet spot when flying straight and level, something DCS hasn't figured out how to tell its virtual pilots. Until it does, though, we will just have to adapt and overcome. cheers horseback

Put the P-47 model next to a Hellcat of the same scale. These were supposedly the two 'safest' fighters of WWII, in terms of losses vs combat hours. But as far as I know, no one ever voluntarily landed a Thunderbolt on a carrier, much less did so routinely. (one P-47 group took off from carriers during the Saipan invasion though) cheers horseback

Not exactly the same; the Mustang MkI/P-51/P-51A all flew with Allison V-1710s with a single supercharger, while the P-51H used a V-1650-9 Packard Merlin (which would have been much improved from the earlier examples used in the B/C a year earlier). But the Allison powered versions are reputed to be much 'sweeter' handling than the Merlin versions because that was the engine the airframe was designed for. I would like to see a B/C with a Malcolm hood, though; I've read more than one ace's memoirs stating flat out that it gave better vision at critical angles and was a steadier gun platform because of the higher profile. The numbers of razorback Mustangs still operating several months after the introduction of the D/K model in May '44, often with the fin fillet mod would seem to bear this out. cheers horseback

My emphasis was primarily on the drag of the wings; as I understand it, every wing is a compromise between speed (low drag) and lift/maneuverability (high drag), and the more lift/maneuverability you get, the more attendant drag. I'm not calling the Zero draggy, I am simply pointing out that its top speed (as with every other aircraft) was limited by the engine's power versus the amount of drag the wings & airframe generated; the Zero could have been faster if it had a lower drag/higher speed wing, but that would have cost it the lift and maneuverability that the Japanese air forces prized. The Zero would have needed a much more powerful engine to be significantly faster than it was. cheers horseback

The power to weight ratio is quite important, but so also is drag versus lift; the Zero's top speed was limited because it was fairly draggy as a consequence of the high lift wing design. As I recall, drag increases exponentially with speed, so it takes a lot more engine power to increase your speed as your speed increases. Compare the Mustang to the Spitfire Mk VIII/IX series; same basic engine/supercharger, very different aircraft. The Mustang is much heavier, but more streamlined for low drag which gives it a higher top speed and somewhat better fuel economy (most of its extra weight is dedicated to much more fuel and the necessary structural strength and protection to carry that fuel into combat). Its wing is designed for high speeds, while the Spit's wing is designed more for lift and maneuverability, making it a better knife fighter close in. The Spit VII/IX series is significantly lighter and can out climb and out accelerate the Mustang as well, but cannot achieve the same top speed in level flight, due to its greater drag. The Zero just took this concept much further.

For the sake of accuracy, the wartime Seafires were all developments from the Spitfire Mk V; the later models which saw action in the Pacific were optimized for lower alts, had a four bladed prop and the full complement of 12 exhaust pipes (instead of the Mk Vc standard three on a side) with the 'universal' filter under the nose. By all reports, they were absolute hot rods and a joy to fly. They were ideal for running down kamikazes, and were quite good at it when the opportunity arose. Landing on carriers was NOT a joy, however. Most were lost or damaged in landings. The basic airframe just wasn't designed with carrier landings in mind.

Yes, about a month prior.

In real life, P-51 pilots used flaps in combat quite often; ergonomics was a very rare consideration in WWII cockpit design, but for the most part, the Mustang cockpit was pretty good for its era.

Just got the Thrustmaster TPR pedals, and they, they, they are freakin' amazing!!!:pilotfly: They leave my old CH and TFRP plastic pedals in the dust; make landing and take off much, much easier. Worth every penny (and I paid waaaay too much of my tax refund on them). Anybody else? What are your experiences and opinions?

A Marianas campaign vintage P-40 would be the M or N. I'd like to see an E or F/L, over New Guinea. I should live so long.

The Corsair eventually became the better fighter, after years of upgrades and improvements, but the Hellcat was there in greater numbers, in better reliability and was much easier to fly. The great ones, like the Spitfire, the Mustang and the FW-190 allow the pilot to be at his best almost immediately, and the Hellcat had that quality in spades.

The strong point of Japanese early war fighters like the Zero was their acceleration from low speeds to medium speeds; this is a result of a very light airframe and high lift wing design, but the cost was a relatively lower top speed. Wonderful for maneuverability and climb from right after takeoff to about 250-300 kts, and an excellent advantage when combating US fighters which were faster but took longer to achieve top speed (the P-40's acceleration was often considered 'exhilarating'by Hellcat pilots who got to fly it :(). Thus, a Corsair or Hellcat might be escaped or beaten if you got him low and slow with a series of sharp maneuvers; you get to choose whether to disengage because you will get to your top speed much sooner than he can, and be well on your way home before he can start to catch up--assuming he still has you in sight. A potential 400 knots is useless until you are there or nearly there. American fighter doctrine in the Pacific and CBI was to get fast, get high and maintain that state or die and it was appreciably harder to score against the Japanese for most of the war than it was against the Axis in the ETO and Mediterranean--USAAF pilots who barely made it out of Java and New Guinea in one piece often did very well in the ETO (when they encountered the enemy).