P-38 Lightning Information
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LIGHTNING: Innovative and deadly!
Lockheed's first combat airplane was one to remember!
It combined a number of innovative ideas to meet
the 1936 Air Corps requirements for a twin engine
high altitude fighter. Having a twin boom layout
with a central nacelle for the pilot and machine
guns, this advanced design had early problems that
had to be resolved before it became the perfect
flying gun platform serving with distinction.
The P-38's first flight was in January 1939 and
remained in production until the war's end in 1945.
It was able to escort and protect bombers for up
to 12 hours on raids deep into enemy territory.
Total production run reached 9923 aircraft!
Construction tips!
The P-38, with the twin booms, is our most complex
fighter. If you will be setting your model down
on the table top, you will have to weight it's nose
with ABC (already been chewed) gum. |
As unprofessional as
it may sound, give each of the three fuselage sections
a sideways squeeze to make them a bit more 'egg
shaped than they would otherwise be.
The Lightning will go together easier if you glue
the tail surfaces to the booms after the rest of
the P-38 is assembled. Take a bit of extra effort
to form the air scoops to a smooth curve. Notice
there are left and right sided pieces.
You'll find it's easier and less confusing to assemble
one boom at a time. (Notice that the forward sections
are slightly larger). Shape the upper engine and
mid-boom air scoops with a smooth pencil or round
dowel before gluing them in place. Machine guns
are made from rounded toothpicks painted black and
glued into holes coaxed into the nose with the tip
of your x-acto knife. Round out the upper surface
of the wing, match and glue together along the trailing
edges.
Assembling the sections is fun.... glue wings to
the center nacelle and wait patiently until
dry. Then glue the booms over the shaded areas of
the wings. While that sets up, line up the tail
surfaces and glue into place. Install the radio
antenna as shown. |
|
Few would dispute the P-38's claim to epitomise the successful
realisation of the long-range tactical fighter in World War 2.
Design work began early in 1937 to meet an exacting USAAC requirement.
Lockheed's Model 22 won the competition and in June 1937 one prototype,
designated XP-38, was ordered. It flew on 27 ]anuary 1939, followed
on 16 September 1940 by the fust of 13 YP-38 evaluation aircraft
with more powerful V-1710 engines and nose armament of four machine-guns
and a 37mm cannon. Delivery of production P-38s began in ]une
1941; 30 were built, one modified to an XP-38A with a pressurised
cabin. The next production model was the P-38D (36 built), with
self-sealing fuel tanks, and airframe modifications. The RAF ordered
the type in 1940, naming it Lightning, but only three Mk Is with
mn-supercharged engines were delivered; a contract for 624 Mk
Us was cancelled. The remaining 140 Mk Is were repossessed as
the P-322 by the USAAF, which also acquired the Mk Us; many were
later convened to P-38Fs or Gs. Meanwhile, the USAAF's next version,
the P-38E. entered production (210 built) with a 20mm replacing
the 37mm cannon. Increased power was the major improvement in
the F and G models, enabling the carriage of external weapons
or fuel tanks for the first time. Production of 527 P-38Fs and
1,082 P-3SGs, deliveries beginning during 1942, heralded a marked
expansion in the P-38's deployment in the major theatres of the
war. The P-38H of 1943 had further increased power; 601 P-38Hs
were delivered. The 2,970 P-381s were similar, but introduced
chin' air cooler intakes; increased internal fuel raised endurance
(with drop-tanks) to 12 hours. Even greater numbers were built
of the rocket-canyingP-38L, with l,600hr' V-1710-lll/113 engines
and a maximum speed of 414mph (666kmh). Lockheed manufactured
3,810 P-38Ls; 2,000 were ordered from Vultee, who completed 113
before the remainder were cancelled when the Pacific war ended.
P-38s converted for other duties included a few P-38M night fighters
from P-38Ls, a few TP-38L conversion framers, and the undesignated
'Droop Snoot' and 'Pathfinder' (formerly] or L models). The most
widely used single photo-reconnaissance aircraft of World War
2, nearly 1,400 E, F, G, H. I and L models were converted to F-4s
or F-5s.
WHEN the United States Army Air Corps issued a specification
for a high-altitude interceptor in 1937, Lockheed were already
aware of the qualities demanded by the more forwardlooking theorists
such as Claire Chennault: speed, ~ceilmg and firepower were the
prime requirements, and these, combined with the ability to carry
enough fuel for acceptable range, added up to a basic requirement
for power. Therefore, two of the new Allison v-I 710 engines were
chosen, and after aamining every possible arrangement of two engines
the Lockheed designers settled on a twinboom configuration, with
pilot and armament in a central nacelle. Predicted performance
was such that this design was eventually selected by the Air Corps
and inJune 1937 a prototype was ordered by the United States Army
Air Corps as the XP-38. The XP-38 flew for the first time in January
1939, powered by two 960-hp V-1710s, but crashed on landing the
following month after a recordbreaking transcontinental flight.
The 13 YP-38s that followed in 1940-41 used one each of the V-17l0-27
and -29 1150-hp engines with turbosuperchargers, the different
engine models being used to drive 'handed' propellers rotating
in opposite directions. Armament was a 37-mm (1.46-in) M2 cannon
plus four machine-guns, two each of O.3-in (?.62-mm) and O.5-in
(l2.7-mm) calibre. By mid 1940 Lockheed had received orders from
France, Britain and the USAAC. The French order was taken over
by Britain as a result of the invasion of France, and since the
British insisted that their Lightning I should have lower-powered,
nonsupercharged engines and propellers rotating in the same direction,
it proved unacceptable to the RAF.
All but three of the 140 Lightning Is were taken over by the
USAAF and designated P-322s. The remaIning 524 Lightning ITs had
1325-hp V-1710-49/53 or V-17l0-51/55 turbo-supercharged engines
and 'handed' propellers, but these too were taken over by the
USAAF in 1942 and designated P-38F and P-38G.
Meanwhile, 30 production P-38s had been delivered to the USAAF
from mid 1941. These had 1150-hp V-1710-27/29 engines and all
four machine-guns were of 0.5-in calibre. However, the absence
of combat protection led to the introduction of the new designation
P-38D for the remaining 36 originally ordered, these having self-sealing
fuel tanks. The 210 P-38Es that followed replaced the 37-mm cannon
with a 20-mm (0.79-in) weapon.
The Lightning remained in production until the end of the war,
gaining steadily in performance and demonstrating remarkable versatility.
The 527 P-38Fs produced from early 1942 introduced racks for two
drop-tanks of up to 1136 litres (250 Imp gal) capacity or a pair
of 454-kg (1000-Ib) bombs, and later examples were the first to
be fitted with Fowler flaps for improved combat manoeuvrability.
The last 200 of the 1082 P-380s built, and the 601 P-38Hs that
followed, increased the bombload to 1451 kg (32001b), the latter
variant being powered by 1425-hp V-1710-89/91 engines. The same
powerplant was used in the P-38J, but in conjunction with a new
cooling system for the compressed air from the superchargers involving
redesigned engine nacelles; this modification allowed the full
power of the engine to be utilized and maximum speed to be raised
to 666km/h (414mph). A total of 2970 P-38Js were delivered from
1943, and production was completed by 3923 P-38Ls, with 1475-hp
V-1710-l1l/113 engines.
Lightnings entered service in 1941 and were deployed in Europe,
North Africa and the Pacific during 1942. Much of the type's
early service was as a bomber escort, and later it was used
extensively as a ground-attack aircraft carrying rockets or
bombs. The Droop Snoot modification, with a navigator/bomb-aimer
carried in the nose, and later radar-equipped Lightnings operated
as pathfinders with P-38 formations on bombing missions. Towards
the end of the war 75 P-38Ls in the Pacific were modified as
P-38M radar-equipped night-fighters. The Lightning ended the
war with more Japanese aircraft to its credit than any other
type, among its victims being the aircraft carrying the Japanese
naval commander, Admiral Yamamoto who was flying in a Mitsubishi
G4 MlL2 Navy Type I over Bougainville, in April 1943. Apart
from many F-4 and F-S photo-reconnaissance conversions, individual
P-38s were modified experimentally to act as glider tugs, torpedo
carriers and smoke-layers.
During the latter half of the Pacific War, as has already
been alluded to, American fighter planes caught,
and then surpassed, the Zero in performance. The top land based
Army Air Force fighter in the Pacific
was the Lockheed P-38 Lightning. This big twin engine fighter
had the range, firepower, and speed to
dominate the skies in the theater. The number one American ace,
Major Richard Bong (40 victories),
flew the Lightning, as did the number two American ace Major
Thomas McGuire (38 victories). The
P-38 also made a major contribution in the European theater,
but the extremely high altitude combat
taking place over the continent was not really the best environment
for the P-38's Allison engines. In
the Pacific, the Japanese did not normally operate at extreme
altitudes, and the P-38 really came into its
own.
U. S. Navy and Marine pilots flew different airplanes, of course,
and they had two of the best in the
Pacific. One of these was the Chance Vought F4U Corsair, the famous
fighter with the inverted gull
wings (the famous German Stuka dive bomber also had inverted gull
wings, the only other famous
aircraft of WW II I can think of that did). The Corsair was so
big and fast that until the end of 1944 the
Navy used it entirely as a land based fighter. Finally, though,
it was approved for carrier operations. By
then aces like Marine Major "Pappy" Boyington (28 victories,
and the first man to break Eddie
Rickenbacker's WW I record of 26) had made the Corsair fighter
famous.
The other "best" carrier fighter was the illustrious
Grumman F6F Hellcat. The Hellcat entered action in
September 1943, and immediately established a level of superiority
over the Zero that it was to
maintain for the rest of the war. The Hellcat bore the brunt of
the later carrier battles that destroyed the
legendary fast carrier task force of the Imperial Navy. The majority
of top U.S.N. aces flew the Hellcat.
The biggest carrier air battle of the war was the Battle of the
Philippine Sea (or, as Navy aviators called
it, "the Great Marianas Turkey shoot"), of 19-20 June
1944. In this battle, Hellcat fighters distinguished
themselves. Total losses of American aircraft (of all types and
from all causes) were 130, with 76
airmen killed. Total Japanese loss of aircraft amounted to about
480, with a similar number of airmen
lost. In addition, the Japanese lost three large aircraft carriers.
The power of the Japanese fast carrier
task force was broken, never to be re-built. And the Hellcat fighter
was king of the skies over the
Pacific for the rest of the War.
Let's take a look at the P-38 Lightning first. The P-38 shot
down more Japanese aircraft than any other
Allied fighter in WW II. It was flown by both of the top American
aces of the war. Its incredible range
became legendary, and its twin engines particularly suited it
for long over water flights. This last point
is striking, for the P-38 was not designed for long range missions.
To the contrary, it was originally
designed as a high performance, short range interceptor!
The story of the design of the P-38 is a fascinating one, perhaps
the strangest of any of the famous
fighters of WW II. I do not have the space here to go into it
in detail, but I will try to touch on a couple
of the high points.
It started in January of 1937, when the Army Air Corps circulated
to aircraft manufacturers a
specification for a new pursuit plane for the "interception
and attack of hostile aircraft at high altitude".
They wanted a max. speed of 360 m.p.h. at 20,000 ft., and climb
from takeoff to 20,000 ft. in 6
minutes. There were other details, but the point is that the demand
was for a high performance
interceptor. The government anticipated on order for a maximum
of 50 planes, so suitability for mass
production was not a consideration. Lockheed was one of the companies
that entered the competition
to design and build the new fighter.
H. L. Hibard and Clarence "Kelly" Johnson were assigned
the job of primary design. Johnson realized
that no existing engine could provide enough power to meet the
government specification, and began a
series of single seat, twin engine fighter designs. The new Allison
V-1710 had developed 1000 hp. in
tests, and was chosen by the Lockheed design team for the new
fighter. The final layout of the new
twin engine fighter (called the Model 22 by Lockheed) had counter
rotating props, twin tail booms, and
a central fuselage for the pilot. It was powerful, heavy, and
had a wing loading far in excess of any
contemporary fighter, but maneuverability was not deemed particularly
necessary for an interceptor. It
also had a tricycle landing gear, at a time when almost all other
fighters were tail-draggers, and a
control wheel (later yoke) instead of a stick. In order to meet
the high altitude requirements, turbo
superchargers were adopted. The nose of the central fuselage provided
an ideal place to mount the
very effective armament of 1-20mm cannon and 4-.50 cal. MG. There
was no need for interrupter gear
to shoot through a propeller, and no need to "converge"
wing guns. The armament fired straight ahead
for a full 1000 yards. Compare that to the widely separated wing
guns of the British Spitfire, usually set
to converge at 300 yards.
In June 1937, the Army notified Lockheed that their design had
won the competition, and authorized
Lockheed to build one prototype airplane, designated the XP-38.
In late December 1938 the prototype
was ready to fly. It was the most streamline plane ever seen,
the first built with flush riveted external
panels butted together. Stainless steel was used extensively in
its construction. That first XP-38 proved
to be capable of a level speed of 413 m.p.h., and had a terrific
climb rate. In fact, throughout the war,
the P-38 remained one of the fastest climbing American fighters.
Unfortunately, the first prototype
lasted only 16 days. The testing program had barely begun when
the Army decided to use it in a
record setting cross-country flight that ended with a landing
short of the runway, which wrote off the
prototype. Tony LeVier (Lockheed Chief Test Pilot) later estimated
that disaster set the program back
nearly two years. It also probably cost many brave American aviators
their lives when their inferior and
obsolescent planes came up against advanced Axis fighters like
the Zero and ME 109. Had the original
prototype not been lost, those men could, and should, have been
flying high performance P-38s. As it
was, Lockheed had to start from scratch, build another prototype,
and run a whole new test program.
Jump ahead to April 1939. The Air Corps ordered 13 YP-38 airplanes
for testing. In September 1939,
the Army ordered 66 more for service. In August 1940, the Army
ordered over 600 more P-38s. The
war was on in Europe and China, and the P-38 was the only high
performance fighter available.
Except, of course, ordering almost 700 fighters was not the same
thing as delivering the airplanes. At
that time, Lockheed had not even delivered the first YP-38! As
alluded to earlier, the P-38 was not
designed for mass production. In fact, it was intended to virtually
build each of the 50 originally
anticipated aircraft by hand. Many, many production problems had
to be solved before the Lightning
could be produced in quantity. As well as some serious engineering
problems.
The P-38 was one of the first airplanes fast enough to encounter
"compressibility" (more properly
called shock stall) problems in the high altitude, high speed
dive. The basic problem was that in a
sustained dive from high altitude, speed quickly built up to the
point that the airflow over parts of the
airplane (such as the upper surface of the wing) reached supersonic
speeds. Not that the airplane itself
was breaking the sound barrier, but the airflow in certain places
was. A shock wave forms. This
destroys the lift over that part of the wing. It also causes the
air flowing off the wing to affect the tail in
an unusual manner: it increases lift at the tail (Which is normally
negative--an airplane is balanced by
the weight in front of its wings, a down force; the lift of its
wings, an up force; the negative lift of its
tail, a down force--imagine a teeter/totter). This loss of lift
from the wings, coupled with increased lift
from its tail, causes the nose of the airplane to go down. This
increased dive angle causes the speed to
increase farther. And so on, in a vicious and often fatal circle.
The natural response of the pilot is to pull
back on the yoke, which normally causes the elevators at the tail
to increase the down force at the tail,
and brings the nose up to pull out of the dive. But something
terrifying happens. As the pilot tries to
pull the stick back, the up force on the tail increases. No matter
how hard he pulls, the aerodynamic
force on the tail pushes harder. The controls have been described
as feeling as if they were set in
concrete. At this point the airplane is totally out of the pilots
control; there is literally nothing he can do.
The P-38 was not the only airplane to encounter this effect in
dives from very high altitudes (where the
air is thin), the P-47 and F4U both suffered the same problem.
But the P-38 was different.
The big radial engine fighters would dive uncontrollably toward
the earth until they reached the thicker
air at lower altitudes. There two things happened: 1. The speed
of sound increases as an inverse
function of altitude (that is, the speed of sound goes up as the
altitude gets lower); 2. The increased
drag of the thick air on their large frontal surfaces would tend
to limit further speed increases. The
result was that when the speed of sound went up as the airplane
got lower, the shock waves started to
dissipate (the airflow over the wings began to fall back below
the increased speed of sound), and as the
increased drag started to affect the airplane, the speed of the
airflow also decreased, and the shock
waves dissipated more. Finally the pilot would begin to get some
control back, and still pulling back as
hard as he could on the stick, would wind up in a screaming zoom
climb (unless he was unfortunate
enough to have begun the process over mountains high enough to
intrude before he reached the
thicker air of lower altitudes).
The way in which the P-38 differed was in its extremely "clean"
(streamline) design. Its drag was so
low that the thicker lower air often (not always, some pilots
did survive compressibility dives in P-38's)
did not have enough effect for the pilot to regain control in
time: the P-38 just dove straight into the
ground like an arrow. The problem was magnified by a "flutter"
(increasing amplitude vibration) set up
in the tail by these excessive speeds, which often caused the
tail to come off.
Lockheed and the Air Corps lost a number of test pilots and aircraft
trying to understand and solve
these problems. The P-38 had taken them into flight regimes unknown
(or at best poorly understood)
at that time. A harrowing series of test dives, at progressively
steeper angles, was required to plot the
boundaries of these effects. The eventual solution included counter
balancing and raising the tail of the
airplane some 30 inches, and developing high speed dive flaps
to control the rate of descent. My father
was at this time a young aeronautical engineer in the AAF, and
he was the flight test engineer on some
of those test dives. Years later he told me that he fully expected
to be killed in that program; many of
his friends were.
Lockheed produced dive flap kits to retro-fit to planes in the
field, but it was not until they began
producing the P-38J-25-LO model that dive flaps were incorporated
in the new aircraft coming off the
assembly line.
An interesting tidbit of Lightning lore is that during the war
Charles Lindbergh traveled to the Pacific
theater to teach pilots there some fuel conservation tricks for
long range flights. He took the
opportunity to fly a few P-38 combat missions (without authorization),
and scored some air to air
victories. The War Department was horrified (he was still a civilian,
and far too famous to risk in
combat), and whisked him home. A brief chronology of the major
P-38 combat models follows.
The P-38D appeared in August of 1941. This was the first model
to benefit from changing the angle of
the tail, and re-balancing the elevator, which largely eliminated
tail flutter. The "D" also introduced self
sealing gas tanks.
The P-38F went into production in March 1942, and into combat
in the Pacific in December, where
they were to reverse the fortunes of AAF fighter pilots facing
the previously unbeatable Zero. The "F"
had an up rated 1,325 hp. Allison engine. Top speed was 395 m.p.h.
at 25,000 ft.
P-38G models had strengthened Fowler flaps which could be used
at combat speeds up to 250 m.p.h.
to tighten the turning radius. In Europe, pilots of the big Lightnings
now found that they could turn
inside of the much smaller ME 109 at low altitudes. They also
had more powerful engines (a 100 hp
increase). Production began in August 1942. The "H"
model was similar.
The P-38J began production in mid-1943. It incorporated many
improvements, including more
powerful engines, improved superchargers, relocation of the intercoolers
from the leading edge of the
wings to beneath the nose of the engines, a bulletproof windscreen,
and, at the J-25-LO model, the
factory installed dive flaps. Speed was up to 426 m.p.h., and
best climb to 3,900 ft./min. It would climb
to 20,000 ft. in 5.9 minutes.
The "K" was a special high altitude model, and the
subsequent P-38L of 1944 was the final and best
Lightning. It incorporated many of the improvements of the "J"
and "K" models, and provided the
greatest margin of combat superiority over Axis fighters of any
Lightning model. Specifications of the
P-38L-5-LO follow.
Wingspan: 52 ft.
Length: 37 ft. 10 in.
Height: 12 ft. 10 in.
Wing area: 328 sq. ft.
Engine: Allison V-1710-111, 1,600 hp. at 28,700ft.
Max speed: 414 m.p.h. at 25,000 ft.
Climb to: 10,000 ft., 4 min.; 20,000 ft., 7 minutes
Service ceiling: 44,000 ft.
Combat range: 450 miles at 290 m.p.h. at 10,000 ft.;
2,600 miles with max. external fuel
Empty weight: 14,100 lb.
Loaded weight: 21,600 lb.
Armament: 1-20mm cannon, 4-.50 cal MG, 3,200 lb. external stores.
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