A jug in the Hudson

I'm a lover of WWII airplanes, especially the Republic P-47. For anyone remotely interested in this particular airplane and WWII air combat in general, I highly recommend the biography about Hubert "Hub" Zemke WWII P-47 fighter pilot and flight leader. It's really great.

WWMAGA

You know, it amazes me whenever I read about these guys in WWII, whether it's Army infantry, Air Corps, Navy, Marines, or whatever. (Most of them younger at the time than we are now). They had great, monumental balls. Maybe because they grew up during the depression, or because patriotism meant more then than it does now. Or the enemy was more evil than we perceive it today. But it amazes me. Take the time to research and read. You will be amazed too. We enjoy what we have today because of them. They are truly heros.

Will wrote: In reply to NickD: The number of surviving warbirds has much more to do with which models continued in service after the war than with mechanical complexity. P-51s stayed in service while P-38s and P-47s were melted for scrap. The AF didn't sell its last Mustangs until 1957.

There's places in the Pacific where they dug giant holes and filled them with p-38's..... Tragic really as they were one of the best planes we had, and the only one in production for the entirety.

In reply to Gary:

I would say the face of warfare has changed. The stakes where higher back then. There is more intervention now. Between the US and UN playing "world police", the classic "enemy nation"(aside from Russia retaking the soviet bloc)will never be allowed to expand as the Axis did before being confronted. The first Iraq war was a perfect example.

The other deterant to total warfare is the nuclear arsenal and MAD. Short of North Korean levels of lunacy, it makes the powers that be hold back, because it is the point of no return.

To touch on a sentiment from the "modern plight/millenials suck" thread from last week. 75 years ago, everything went to the war effort. 50 years ago, while rationing and scrabble drives where no longer a way of life, the threat of conscription loomed over an entire generation of young men. Today, the average American is as removed from our conflicts as they choose to be. While things are far from perfect, they are much better than they had been. For that I am grateful.

Back to the original topic, it is amazing how few warbirds remain. A modern example is the tomcat. Retired ten years ago and all scrapped so the Iranians couldn't get their hands on the modern avionics.

Although the P-38 was an impressive plane, it did have it's faults and those are likely why it did not have the longevity of the P-51. Foremost of which was complexity and cost. It was almost twice as expensive to build as a P-51 (approx. $97,000 vs $50,000), it was rather complex (two motors, two turbos etc). The twin "survivability" was not as impressive you might think. Although it could fly home on one engine, a one engined P-38 was a big target. An engine failure on takeoff would also kill most pilots in the early war years (plane would cartwheel in if full power was held on one engine). It also had the famous compressability aerodynamics issue in dives (could not pull out). There were band-aids for that in latter models, but it was still there. Heating and cooling comfort for the pilot was also not good.

As to why the P-51 was longer lived then the later P-47's that is hard to say. The N models were pretty impressive and generally comparable to the P-51. (I am sure the poor bastards that had to use P-51'a for ground attack in Korea sure wished they had P-47's!). I suspect it had to do with a bit better speed and range, or maybe just politics (North American became a very successful company, Republic.

The P-51 was not without it's issue either. The airfoil shape that helped give it it's great range also gave it a very harsh stall characteristic (especially when piloted by 19 year olds!) The aux tank behind the pilot was also rather dangerous in that when full (needed to make those long range flights) it gave the plane a dangerously rear CG (P-51's are not allowed to fly using that tank in modern times). Combine a rear CG (makes stalls hard to recover from) with an already bad stall response... bad things happen (it apparently was not uncommon to see P-51's spinning out of dogfights).

Sucks to see the Jug go down. A bit surprised by the loss of the pilot though. The plane is actually a pretty good shape for ditching and I am sure any modern plane would have shoulder harnesses.

Dr. Hess wrote: 8 M2's, 4 on each wing. When that thing lit off, that must have been some show. Unless you were on the other end of it.

Either end would still be a show! Not necessarily a good show, but quite a show nonetheless!

In reply to aircooled:

American WWII fighters all had harnesses.

I'm wondering if the pilot hit his head and was knocked unconscious or just drowned. He was a well respected warbird pilot.

P-47s probably weren't used long after WW II because of the Corsair. I have no idea what made it a better aircraft except the whistling is super cool.

The Tbolt was intended as a high altitude plane (turbo) and I think the handwriting was on the wall for jets to take that domain. The AAF unloaded their 47's as quickly as they could after the war (gave them to ANG and Foreign governments), I suspect in part due to their high cost and the superior range of the Mustang. Reports were that Bill was conscious and trying to get out of the plane when it sank... Dunno what happened, but I hope this wasn't a case of him sacrificing himself to avoid destroying the plane. There's a reference in Yeager's autobiography about how hard he found it to fly the Mustang when he took a hop in one in his later life. When he was doing it every day during the war it was pretty rote, but it's a challenging plane to fly.

Damn. Sucks to hear.

I seem to remember reading somewhere that radial engines are a bit more maintenance I intensive than the Merlin used in the P51?

Hmmm... possibly. There are 28 cylinders to replace spark plugs in rather then 12 and many will be a lot more awkward to replace but you also don't have to worry about the cooling system.

In reply to aircooled:

Regarding the P-51 high-speed snap stall: The very best Mustang pilots actually taught themselves to use that very characteristic in dogfights to force a bandit on their six (and starting to pull gun lead) to overshoot the Mustang's flight path, placing the Mustang driver on the bandit's deep six in the span of about 2 seconds.

aircooled wrote: Hmmm... possibly. There are 28 cylinders to replace spark plugs in rather then 12 and many will be a lot more awkward to replace but you also don't have to worry about the cooling system.

and there were two per cylinder, plus seven magneto's.

Oh wait, the P-47 had the R-2800 engine. It did not have 28 cylinders, 18 if I recall. This is the same engine as used in the F6F Hellcat and the F4U Corsair.

Many are thinking 3350, oops that was also 18 cyl. the 28 cylinder engine was the 4360.

aircooled wrote: An engine failure on takeoff would also kill most pilots in the early war years (plane would cartwheel in if full power was held on one engine).

This was due to poor technique. Pilots were used to pulling up during the takeoff roll and letting the plane get itself off the ground. With a twin on one engine this can be disastrous. It wasn't until later that they learned/practiced the concept of minimum takeoff velocities where they wouldn't try to pull up until after the plane was past its Vmc.

Of course, war is hell, your runway may be oh-too-short for various reasons, so you take off however you can and if you lose an engine, well, you're gonna crash if you do nothing, only maybe crash if you pull up early...

Ah yes, 18. Still more then 12. The 3350 is still 18. It's the 4360 (4 row) that is 28.

I corrected myself. You are right. It's been awhile.

Looking at that cutaway engine is like looking at one of those old steam engine locomotives where you scratch your head, screw up your face and mutter, "How the berkeley did they make that work?

In reply to stroker:

Cutaways always look crazy. Really, the rods are a neat arrangement where there's a single "master" rod and all of the others bolt to it, and the valvetrain is best explained by this video:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/qjnQKXNPsk4

https://www.youtube.com/embed/R71Xhrkc3EQ

Two Thunderbolts did have 4360s, but they were called the P-72.

Interesting thing with radials. They were built in rows. single, twin and four. Never heard if there was a three row.

Some very early radials had the engine rotating around a fixed crankshaft. Several WW 1 engines we like that. Lots of odd features. They can be seen and heard at the "Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome"

Those are known as rotary engines. Mr Wankle kind of confused the situation in later years.

Interesting observation about there being no three row radials. I cannot see any reason why not (it's not a balance issue). I suspect the main reason is that they where getting plenty of power out of the two rows. Beyond two rows, cooling gets a bit convoluted, so that's probably one reason.

The 7 cylinder, 4 row P&W R4360 Wasp Major were somewhat notorious for cooking engines on the flight line.

Knurled wrote:

aircooled wrote: An engine failure on takeoff would also kill most pilots in the early war years (plane would cartwheel in if full power was held on one engine).

This was due to poor technique. Pilots were used to pulling up during the takeoff roll and letting the plane get itself off the ground. With a twin on one engine this can be disastrous. It wasn't until later that they learned/practiced the concept of minimum takeoff velocities where they wouldn't try to pull up until after the plane was past its Vmc. Of course, war is hell, your runway may be oh-too-short for various reasons, so you take off however you can and if you lose an engine, well, you're gonna crash if you do nothing, only maybe crash if you pull up early...

Not to mention the 38 was an innovator that didn't have the advantage of wartime experience to really influence its design, all subsequent designs were better thanks to the priorly unknown issue of compressibility. It is a shame that it wasn't until most were already in the pacific before they learned how to get the range out of them(supposedly thanks to Lindbergh), as they could have been the first to go the distance to Berlin with the bombers.

Honestly, the Jug was a phenomenal airframe as well....the FW-190 was supposedly still superior however.

This is one of my favorite stories about the P47: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_S._Johnson

After pulling out of an uncontrolled spin and with the fire amazingly going out on its own, Johnson headed for the English Channel, but was intercepted by a single Fw 190. Unable to fight back, he maneuvered while under a series of attacks, and although sustaining further heavy damage from hundreds of 7.92 mm rounds, managed to survive until the German ran out of ammunition. The German rocked his wings to salute Johnson, then turned back. His opponent was likely the commander of III/JG 2, Oberst Egon Mayer, an infamous fighter ace.[2] [N 1]After landing, Johnson tried to count the bullet holes in his airplane, but gave up after the tally passed 200 - without even moving around the aircraft.