Larry, yes it is a good site. The climb was at combat rating rather than WEP, which is limited to about 5 minutes. Flight at combat rating was limited to an hour. An interesting part of that page is the AFDU tactical trials for the MkXIV. It sheds some light on the slipper tanks used. According to this and the spit manuals I have, the slipper tanks could be jettisoned in flight in the same way other drop tanks are. This line from the tactical trials is very interesting Even with the 90 gallon tank, the Spitfire XIV can equal or outclass the FW.190 (BMW.801D) and the Me.109G in every respect. When I said the RAF were always planning to bomb at night, I meant the heavy bombers. There were a few special raids that were done during the day and others later in the war, but on the whole heavy bomber raids were done at night.

Great things are coming for P38 fans. Very shortly some momentous announcements will be made that will confirm the P38’s place in history as the greatest plane ever made. This will shock some people, but will merely confirm what every true P38 fan already knows. Before I reveal what is about to happen I have to tell the true history of the P38. By 1943 the US knew it had the greatest plane ever made. Strong suggestions were made to replace every war plane in the US inventory with P38s. After all it was hundreds of miles an hour faster, had a longer range, was more manoeuvrable and could carry a greater bomb load than anything else.. Why have anything else when you have 600 mph plane that could carry 2 tallboy bombs for 5,000 miles and shoot down anything else in the air. A typical P38 pilot’s day was to drop 20,000lbs of bombs on Berlin, shoot down 20 Me 262s, destroy 50 tanks by strafing and then home .. in 3 hours. As usual security, business and politics got in the way. Boeing, North American Grumman and all the others complained that they would collapse if they stopped making the inferior B17, B24, B26, P40 and P51 planes. Even the ship builders complained, as the P38’s speed and great range eliminated the need for aircraft carriers. There was also great concern that the Germans would copy the P38 (though this was unrealistic as only Lockheed could make a plane like that), so strict security was placed on revealing the P38’s true performance, except in emergencies. All the official documentation was changed to show far lower capabilities, just in case spies got a hold of them. This persists today, with many people quoting documents showing far slower speeds, not realising that they are fake. Of course any true P38 fan knows how fast they really were. So the P38 was given the key task of destroying the hundreds of Me 262s that had been built (being so much faster than the jets). This cleared the way for far lesser planes like the Mustang to provide escort to the lower capacity bombers. Then the P38 was quietly withdrawn from public view, largely to the Pacific. This accidentally was a blessing, as when the B29 program completely failed they had lots of P38s in place to drop bombs on Japan. This culminated in P38s dropping the atomic bombs and ending the war, since the B29 didn’t have nearly the necessary load capacity or range. Far sighted people were looking forward to the cold war at that time and realised that the P38 had to be the West’s first line of defence, as only they could destroy the Russian air force, destroy their tanks and drop atomic bombs on their cities. They realised that it might be possible for the Russians or someone else to possibly copy the P38. Of course it would never be as good, as only Lockheed had mastered the art of nanometre tolerances and only Allison could make engines that good, but they could still be a threat. They had no worries about the British as they had no ability to make planes, their Spitfire being just a propaganda scheme, with over 99% failing to take off or breaking up in the air. As for their bombers, a P38 could fly hundreds of miles per hour faster than a Mosquito (designed and made in Canada of course, as the British could never build anything that good) and carry more bombs than a Lancaster (though only a few ever flew, the British almost entirely using B24s for their bombing effort as they looked similar in the dark). Therefore the great deception plan was made. The US would pretend to make jet planes (and would actually make a few that would be seen) so everyone else would spend their resources trying to copy them. Meanwhile large fleets of P38s would actually do the real work in the strictest secrecy. This would advantage the US in two ways; firstly other countries would bleed themselves economically trying to create inferior jet planes, secondly the US would always have the massive performance advantage of the P38, and at very little cost (Lockheed had got the build cost down to only $1,000 a plane by then). Over the years the US has conned every other country into building multi-million dollar planes while only building a few of their own and having vastly superior P38s hidden away. It was a total secret that the US had only 10 B52s. They would be seen in public, take off, then quietly go and land somewhere else, while the P38s did the actual missions from secret airbases. This was also the reason why the true performance figures of the P38 have never been released. Of course nothing stands still and even the P38 has had to be improved. The first major change was to have double stage turbochargers in 1946. This raised the performance to supersonic speeds (P38s escorted Yeager). Triple stage turbochargers were added in 1953, making the P38 hypersonic. The SR-71 deception project was created just for purpose of covering the triple turbocharger P38s. Stealth was added in 1965 and then invisibility in 1971, which co

it was a 28mm but it was for shipboard use so it had a larger cartridge because it had to launch the shell higher. Aircraft rounds tend to have lower power cartidges.

AussieEngineer. I thought in reading the notes that it said the climb was at high boost and they what waved the five minute rule for the climb trials. As the time to 50K is only 5.1 min. I don't see a problem with that anyway. Nobody in actual combat is going to worry about it much.

In the early days of the war the RAF didn't seem to hesitate about sending Wellingtons (about as heavy as they had at the time) out in daylight. The raids on German Naval Bases for example. Didn't last long, of course, due to losses. Yes, they also planned on night raids, but were already aware that there would be a lot of trouble finding targets at night. Just not any where near aware how bad those troubles were going to be.

I've re read that section. My interpretation was that it had to be adjusted because the tuned properly because they couldn't run it up to 18lb boost on the ground. I could be wrong though, I was however under the impression that combat rating was the 1 hour continuous power rating.

Ref AussieEngineer. Maybe, but the note about ignoring the limit suggested otherwise to me as the climb time was so little over the 5 min. limit mentioned. I also found the notes on the comparison tests of the MkXIV and the Spit IX, TempestV, Mustang III, Me109 and FW190. It seemed to confirm my thoughts on roll rate. Notes that roll for MkXIV is similar to the MkIX, better than the '109 and maybe very slightly better than the Mustang, but that the FW1909 was 'very much better' than the Spitfires. Than agreed with the Robert Johnson comments that in mock combat against Spit Vs and IXs, the P47C could out roll them by about 2 1/2 to one. The Thunderbolt and FW seem to have been on a par with each other.

AussieEngineer; I think you mean me not OBNW. You are definately taking what I've said previously out of context. I don't think I said kills, but being able to score hits, but that is also beside the point. I was demonstrating that accuracy at long range was a more a result of gyro-gunsights than weapon placement. They increased the kill/engagement by 100%. The gyro scopic gunsight allowed a fighter to score hits without being increadibly lucky at such ranges. Any aircraft is going to have great diffilculty trying to hit a target beyond 300 yards without a gyro gunsight.<< Shooter>The gyro gun sight did in fact increase the K/E ratio by over 50%, but it could not increase the probability to hit at ranges far beyond the zero range, since the guns were not pointed at the point in space defined by the sight reticle. AE>>I have also shown conclusively that the MkXIV spit has a higher economical cruise speed than the lightning and suffers a comparitively smaller reduction at range when operating at cruise speeds greater than 300 mph.<< This is the red herring! It is not the economical speeds we are compairing! But the Spitfire's economical speed with the P-38'a fast cruise speed. Depending on model and engines, the p-38 could cruise at 75% throttle or 320 to 360MPH, for over two hours, yealding a RADIUS OF ACTION OF AT LEAST 400 MILES at OVER 300MPH! That is RADIUS, not range, of 400 miles! Since no armed spitfire variant could cruise at ANY SPEED above 275TAS for 400 miles and return to base, it proves my point! Since the Radius of the P-38 at 75% throttle is greater than the Spitfires range at ANY SETTING, I think we can safely say the P-38 out ranges the Spitfire and out speeds it to at NORMAL CRUISE SETTINGS! The Allison engine would run for it's entire TBO life of 400 hours at 75% throttle, something that can not be said of the Merlin. The MINUS TWO PSI is only for referance since it is the throttle setting required to reach plackard range, not radius, in the Spitfire air plane! Your failure to include reserves, warm up and TT&L use in your fuel use calculations, makes the Spit look much better in this regard than it was. The early planes had a 40 MINUTE flight time in real terms in a combat environment. Later planes could go 45 minutes. When compairing the Mustang to the Spitfire, it was said that the only diferance was that the P-51 would do for EIGHT HOURS what the Spit would do for 40 minutes. The above goes to my point that cruising speed was faster in the P-38 than the Spitfire.

To OBNW; You are absolutely right, the 1.1 was a terrible weapon. What I pointed out was that the ammo was supirior to all contemporaries in terms of MV, BC, fuse reliability and destructiveness in a munition suitable for an AC weapon!

Yes but its size! the cartridge is huge you would have needs a B17 to carry more than half a dozen rounds. if you reduce the size of the cartridge your lose a lot of performance, if you look at successful cannon rounds they are all smaller rounds that have been increased, the rounds that were necked down from larger casings were failure.