I reckon turbosupercharger boost was helpful flying in tropical hot air of low density.

I'm not well-versed in the details of the system used by the various p-38s, but it was typical for allied fighters to have plenty of mechanical boost for low-altitude operations with the turbo providing extended high-altitude operation in low density air where the extra power in thinner air gave fairly draggy airframes enhanced speed and efficiency. I believe the p-38 designers started with the long booms to allow their structural and aerodynamic groups a head start, knowing there would be plenty of room to accommodate the mechanical bits which were still in development. Some other early fighters were forever limited by airframes which were too compact to allow for these systems. The p-47 was one of the other benefactors of this allowance for lots of extra plumbing. The p-38 must have seemed like a Cadillac of the air in tropical high-altitude long range operations.@@tonyz7216

Not to mention it had more area of horizontal flight surface making it capable of gliding or staying airborne even after sustaining heavy damage. There's been documented incidents where P38 pilots were able to land in planes nearly cut in half, like missing half of its tail and most of one wing.

If you're the pilot, I'm sure having a 2x cost plane with 2x engines gives you assurance over the Pacific. But having half the planes in the air might cost more lives in the overall scheme of things. That said, the P-38 was the best we had in the critical early phase of the war.

If you are down to a choice between quantity and quality, then quantity often is better, depending on the sacrifices made. Once allied pilots understood the weaknesses of the zero (and Japanese tactics) the high rate of attrition outweighed the lower cost and higher production rates for Japan. You can often replenish planes, but skilled and experienced pilots may take years to replace.@@GeorgeOu

Carl, I have it on good authority the "he" is actually a "She"!

those danged algorithymns

no matter how you spell it it feels like a dance step

@@moss8448 Al-Gore-Rhythms

Amen Carl. Let us all, denizens of Google as we are, pray to its benevolent wisdom; and that it should promote Greg's videos to more and more like minded aviation history nuts, such as ourselves.

I couldn't agree more.

Hi 20. Doesn't flying into yesterday make the aircraft slow? But I understand that always flying into tomorrow especially fast either. It's a very nice aircraft either way.

@@roderickcampbell2105 Not in this case. The plane wasn't slow, I can tell you that.

@@20alphabet Hi 20. Oh, I knew that! Good stuff. I hope you were the best for it. Regards.

?

SR-71 crews experienced some type of similar phenomenon when flying from the base in England that they operated out of back to the States, I remember reading where one of the pilots said that they landed 7 minutes earlier than when they took off because they were flying faster than the Earth rotates, he also said that during one particularly long mission he observed something like 3 sunrises and sunsets during that one mission alone.

Once agin another fine job and informitive video i would like to add that even with its later war drawbacks the Ge rmans refered to it as the fork-tailed devil im sure do c to causing them bigger issues then say range power or compressability lol keep up the good work

The sight of her alone scared the hell out of our enemies.

Don't forget that it was also one of the major "Photo Joe" planes in the Pacific, which was of not insignificant importance.

I agree with of your points but others no. The Spitfire with the help of the P40, P38 and P47 cleaned the Mediterranean. In that order. What Spain and Morocco has to do with the P38 I have no idea. The bomber escorts, didn't go so well until early 1944 when longer range P47 finally had the range to escorts the bombers all the way.

@@samuelgordino The Morocco thing was an incident involving Spanish He 112’s shooting down a P 38 that wandered into Spanish Moroccan airspace. In response the US Army Air Force flew everything through Moroccan airspace letting them know that they were not going to tolerate that sort of behavior, and it worked. It is more of a joke reference. Also the clearing of Tunisia, Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica of Luftwaffe and Aeronautica Militare forces was the main air battle that the Axis Forces never recovered from for the rest of the war in the Mediterranean.

@@XDHannah It wasn’t called Fork Tailed Devil for nothing.

If you like the style, check out hypohysterical history, he does exactly the same thing with battles in the Pacific. He's an Aussie so it's from that perspective but it's fantastic.

Agreed. The only problem I have with Greg's channel is that he needs to quit having a life outside of KZfaq so he can generate more content. 😬

Him and Drachinafel and the Chieftan.

How do you subscribe to so many channels? I wish I had that much time.

Can't agree more, I'm here because your videos get into the nitty gritty aspects of aircraft design.

Tech details. Good dessert.

Wikipedia is good for basic facts. Like any encyclopaedia, it a) can be incorrect, and b) doesn't do research. All the channels I follow have something new or original to say. Thanks Greg. It's nice to see that your work is appreciated!

@@AndrewBlucher Also with current issues and their "no original research"-rule it makes them heavily dependant on either media reporting or tertiary sources. If either is Biased and the editors do not take care to add balanced research, articles can be at the least one-sided, if not flat out wrong. And the Wikipedia leadership has shown political bias in recent years.

@@LupusAries Political bias? Please expand on this point. I suspect that depends on one's politics :-)

Its just the question of which P38 variant (or which Bf109 for that matter).

Designed by "Kelly" Johnson who also designed the SR 71 Blackbird

@@karlvongazenberg8398 Or Spitfire. All were 1930 fighters that fought in 1945.

@@Nastyswimmer Now there is an amazing career for you... Kelly Johnson. First plane to exceed 400mph in level flight and hit compressibility... and his last flew so fast it heated up and lengthened in flight by how many inches?! To the point it it was fueled like a leaking tea kettle and didn't stop leaking until it was supersonic... Now there is some serious perspective on the evolution of technology!

@@karlvongazenberg8398 Although the earlier variants up to the "J" made up the early planes, the J and L made up the most volume. I have read that the J-25 and L variants were by far the best versions of the P-38 at all altitudes and conditions. I'm assuming that is true for the BF109 and the FW190 although development for them likely slowed as the war progressed.

it really desperately needed thinner wings too

The area rule is about reducing drag in the transonic range to facilitate acceleration past that range. Lack of area rule is not the source of the P-38 control issues under compressibility., and no WWII fighters were designed to the area rule The thickly cambered airfoil section of the P-38 lead to early formation of a normal shock wave and its attendant effects. Also, reportedly the venturi effect between the gondola and the engine booms accelerated the airflow even more than the airfoil section alone would have. Ironically, thinner lower drag airfoil sections were available for use by Lockheed, but according to Warren Bodie they chose the thicker airfoil in order to meet the challenging time to climb requirement of the Army P-38 specification. I do agree that while the P-38 may have been the first practical design to encounter a compressibility limit, NACA was aware of compressibility in the early 1930s and I can't believe Kelly Johnson was completely unaware of the phenomenon. Designing to control it was certainly not yet ingrained into the art of airplane design.

@@gort8203 I understand that the area rule is to ensure low wave drag, and that you can point to specific locations which are easy shock formation regions. But seeing as wave drag is a result of shock formation, isn't departure from area rule a good rule-of-thumb indicator for how intense shock formation around the airframe would be?

@@dsdy1205 I don't know that the "intensity" of shock waves is affected by area rule, but intensity of the shock is not the issue for the P-38 -- the issue is the airspeed at which the shock begins to form, AKA the critical Mach number. The effect of area rule is to reduce interference drag. I do not know that it retards the normal formation of shock waves -- it just allows them to cause less drag. Area rule solves a power-required issue rather than a controllability issue, which is what we are talking about with P-38 compressibility. Maybe someone out there with more expertise can elaborate.

"Compressibility" was a known issue in WWI. No kidding.

Greg is his first name, dude. It's Mr Airplanes and Automobiles.

A video ON the NACA ducts themselves would be great and an excellent crossover for automobile enthusiasts to find Greg's work! I have been curious about the science behind them and how it was worked out myself.

NACA ducts are still used in high performance cars today. For exaple, the Porsche GT2 RS has them. They're not super common now on cars' exterior, but many still use them for secondary ducts on the floor. NACA ducts were originally designed as inlets for subsonic jet aircraft. When mounted close to the nose, they can reduce parasitic drag compared to a conventional ("pitot") inlet, because they avoid the protrusion of such an inlet (hence their origianl name of a submerged inlet) and the associated increase in wetted area. They're also lighter. However, as a jet inlet they are inferior to a pitot inlet, because the ram pressure recovery is much lower (about 90% for a good NACA duct, nearly 100% for a pitot at subsonic speeds), and they can't supply high mass flow like a pitot. They are suitable for applications where pressure recovery isn't very important (so not for feeding an engine, yes for cooling air), and where mass flow isn't very high.

still is

Sorry, I ment to say Thunderbolt

to be fair, I agree; when I see a six hour special Q&A, or a two hour video, I do tend to shy away... horses for courses I suppose.

The other thing those 12 minute formats all seem to have in common is a computerized voice.

The History Guy is a good example of that, his videos are 100% accurate and don't just repeat myths like so many shorter videos do while not boring someone to death. I can watch an hour and a half long video on myths of WW2 that basically is just a speaker at the George Marshall Center but I get where someone half my age (or worse ⅓rd my age, yikes) wouldn't make it through something like that.

@Daniel Large in case you're not being sarcastic, it's 'paradigm'.

@Daniel Large you need more to do. Sitting around pointing out spelling errors is not becoming. He was making an important point.

@@mikebeard8505 Mike, many of your sentences appear to be fragments...Oh my! Additionally, you should ALWAYS capitalize the first word of a sentence. Finally, don't be quite such a boring asshole; when someone corrects your grammar, they're only trying to be helpful.

I'm grateful that I'm alive today and not fighting in the trenches of WWI...or maybe I was, in another life. If that's the case, I'm thankful that I don't remember fighting in the trenches of WWI (all that mustard gas, peeing on my gas mask to get it to work properly, mud, hearing the whistle and"over the top" facing machine guns and artillery, rats, disease, no man's land and barbed wire, the rations, etc.

Truly feels like a blessing to be in reach of this information

Maybe some Spitfire VIII which had a greater range than the Spitfire IX. The Spitfire IX was a spitfire V with a Merlin 61 engine whereas the Spitfire VIII was purpose built.

ME TOO!

Thanks for your kind words. I have heard the Mighty 8th museum is really good. Had the 47's had drop tanks losses would have been a lot lower, I would guess they would have been at least 50 percent lower, probably more.

@@johnbrewer8954 You should probably watch some of his other videos

@@johnbrewer8954 another butthurt brit

I had a book about the Pacific Theater as a kid. One of the pictures showed a p-38 with a dead engine and feathered prop on one side...and a hole big enough to see the Japanese home islands thru in the other wing. Twin-engine redundancy must've been greatly appreciated over the vast shark-infested waters.

@@paulslevinsky580 Just have Red West stick a few beer cans in the holes and she will be fine! *props to anybody that knows where that visual comes from.

@@sadwingsraging3044 Black Sheep Squadron, originally called Baa Baa Black Sheep until it's syndication when it was changed to Black Sheep Squadron. And Red West was a member of Elvis' "Memphis Mafia" along with sharing some song writing credits on a few of his big hits.

@@dukecraig2402 where do I mail your cigar?!!? Snuck in to fish his bass pond as a kid a few times! Had some nice fish he did.

@@sadwingsraging3044 Oh wow, no kidding. Him and Elvis had that falling out over him writing that tell all book, but the very things he exposed Elvis for in it and had tried to put an end to, namely being addicted to pills, were the very things that were his undoing and ultimately led to his death. Didn't West have a brother who was also a member of the Memphis Mafia?

I’m surprised Greg’s sub numbers are that low. There are many crappy channels that cover this topic, with way more subs, i don’t get it.

@@dennyhooper8987 I'm obviously on a way smaller scale but with my channel I can't understand what will get a few thousand fews and what will get less than 100.