Yoda967 Posted January 30, 2022 Share Posted January 30, 2022 When I was growing up, one of the men in our church had been a P-47 pilot during WWII, and he told a story about taking damage and having his oil pressure drop to zero over open water a long way from home. He kept going, figuring that as long as the engine was running, he was getting closer to home, and every minute closer to home was less swimming he'd have to do. As he pulled the power crossing the runway threshold, the engine seized and the prop came to a sudden stop. When he got home from the Pacific, he moved to East Hartford and got a job with Pratt & Whitney. I've been practicing with the ED P-47D for a while now and today decided I'd build a quick dive bombing mission over Normandy, as number 4 in a 4-ship attack on some fuel storage tanks along the railroad tracks south of Vire. I put a battery of light flak northeast of town and took off from Cretteville. Over the target, I caught the full force of that battery. I broke off my run, assessed the damage, saw that the oil pressure was zero, and jettisoned my bombs and the partially empty drop tank. The plane started shaking. I looked around, and my flight was gone, which meant navigating home on my own. I looked around for a landmark and spotted the coast. I headed towards a familiar-looking bay. As I got closer, I realized that it wasn't the bay I was looking for; I'd ignored my compass and flown for five minutes in the wrong direction. I turned north and crossed my fingers. All the engine gauges were reading normal except for the oil pressure. "Well," I thought, "let's see how this damage model does," and I kept going. As I turned onto downwind at Cretteville, I decided not to mess with the throttle setting much. The engine was running fine at 26" MP, and miraculously, the flaps worked and the wheels came down. I kept it high, making a steep approach on final in case the engine quit, which meant going full flaps. At 300 feet, I needed to slow down...so I pulled the power and that was it...the engine quit. Down we went. We hit hard in the field across the road from the airfield, but at least we didn't go into the trees. Oh, well, any landing you can walk away from. One of the other guys in the flight died over Vire. The whole thing made me think of Mr. Knight's story, and how immersive it was to have a parallel experience on my first "combat" sortie in his Thunderbolt's digital doppelganger. So well done, Eagle Dynamics. Thanks for a great experience! 2 Very Respectfully, Kurt "Yoda" Kalbfleisch London "In my private manual I firmly believed the only time there was too much fuel aboard any aircraft was if it was fire." --Ernest K. Gann Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cool-Hand Posted January 31, 2022 Share Posted January 31, 2022 Wow awesome story and a great parallel to real life. The jug is by far my favorite module by ED. Its got a lot of character in the flight model compared to other warbirds in my opinion. Definitely very unique in the handling with that massive torque from the giant prop and engine. [sIGPIC][/sIGPIC] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peachmonkey Posted January 31, 2022 Share Posted January 31, 2022 cool story! I noticed that the fw190 Anton 8 can travel much further on an engine with no oil pressure than P47. Feeling that A8 might still have some bugs to be worked out I love P47. One thing that stands out the most to me in P47is when you go to external view (F2) and turn on the cockpit lights you can actually see them come on. A8 doesn't do that. D9 doesn't either, nor any other birds... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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