Bailing out of a P-38

[Mudge]

I don't remember if I've asked this before. If I have I can't find it on a search, so here goes.

How does one bail out of a P-38 without getting chopped by the tail section?

Mudge the curious

[bluehawk15]

Mudge,

Sandy Sansing, who flew our P-38 and P-39 (and taught me to fly, as well as got me my multi-engine ticket) flew the P-47 and P-51B in WWII. Sandy was shot down over France while doing an air to ground attack on a plane. His Mustang caught fire and he had to bail out. (I asked him why, if it was still flying, he bailed out. He said that when the flames started getting into the cockpit, he decided it was time to get out!)

He told me the way the book said to get out of the Lightning was to roll onto, then off the wing. He said that isn't how he'd do it though. He said he'd do it the same way he did in the P-51, trim nose down, undo the seatbelt and harness, then roll inverted and let go of the controls. That way you would fall down, but the plane would be climbing up and away from you.

Then you just have to hope that it didn't stall and chase you to the ground, I guess!

[tom d. friedman]

that hand cranked side window panel had to be an issue!!

[Mudge]

Mudge,

Sandy Sansing, who flew our P-38 and P-39 (and taught me to fly, as well as got me my multi-engine ticket) flew the P-47 and P-51B in WWII. Sandy was shot down over France while doing an air to ground attack on a plane. His Mustang caught fire and he had to bail out. (I asked him why, if it was still flying, he bailed out. He said that when the flames started getting into the cockpit, he decided it was time to get out!)

He told me the way the book said to get out of the Lightning was to roll onto, then off the wing. He said that isn't how he'd do it though. He said he'd do it the same way he did in the P-51, trim nose down, undo the seatbelt and harness, then roll inverted and let go of the controls. That way you would fall down, but the plane would be climbing up and away from you.

Then you just have to hope that it didn't stall and chase you to the ground, I guess!

Inverted is pretty much what I figured. I knew you'd have to do something to get the plane going away from you though, but am not "pilot" enough to have thought of trimming the nose down. Rolling off the wing occurred to me but I wasn't very comfortable with the thought of being out there with that prop a few feet away.
Muchas mahalo

Mudge the mollified

[bluehawk15]

Yeah Tom, even though I'm sure you could roll the side window down pretty fast when properly motivated, you still would have to unlatch the overhead. I think unlatching the overhead, letting the slipstream rip it off while you were trimming nose down, rolling inverted and unlatching the harness would be much faster.

[bdk]

Trimming nose down brings the stabilizer down as you are dropping out inverted. Are you sure that is a good idea? Will you drop out faster than the tail goes down?

The reason for jumping towards the wing is that the natural aerodynamic downwash from the wing (you have to throw the air down to support the plane) will carry you below the stabilizer.

[bluehawk15]

Trimming nose down wouldn't bring the tail down, it would climb up and away. I don't think even a full nose down trim, which you wouldn't have to do to get out, would make the tail sink down below the flight level. The entire plane would just climb, inverted. Just like in formation, when one pulls up for the missing man, the tail doesn't drop.

This is the method Sandy used to get out of his on-fire P-51B over France, and said he would use if he needed to get out of the P-38. It's also the procedure that Ron Iberg told me he would use if he needed to get out of a T-33 that he drives from time to time that doesn't have hot seats.

[Sully]

It's also the procedure that Ron Iberg told me he would use if he needed to get out of a T-33 that he drives from time to time that doesn't have hot seats.

When I checked out in the T-Bird I was told "if we go inverted and the canopy comes off, don't say 'What the .......' cause you'll be talking to yourself."

Sully

[TonyM]

There is a famous animated video of "How to bail out of a P-38" that has been included in a couple of documentaries treating the history of this aircraft. The "Planes of Fame" show that appeared on the long forgotten but really missed Discovery Wings Channel comes to mind. I have a lot of these documentaries on video tape---I'll see if I can find the right one.

The animation, produced by the AAF, shows the pilot diving out on the wing, reaching for the wing tip before rolling off the trailing edge; the inverted method is also shown on the video, but I don't know about the instruction about trimming the airplane. Maybe the animated safety video for the P-38 can be found on the Jeff Ethell tape.

TonyM.

[Larry Kraus]

Mudge,

Here's what the P-38 Pilot Training Manual has to say,which pretty well matches the postings above.

[jet1]

...he always said the best thing to do is dive onto the wing as the trailing edge down force would blow you down well clear of the tail. Inverted would be a last ditch move IMHO as you would want the aircraft to be almost completely stalled to get clear of it.

[Mudge]

OK...volunteers to test both methods?
Anyone?...Bueller?...anyone?
I'll tell you what...I'll volunteer. All someone has to do is get me up in a P-38.

Mudge the test dummy

(Operable word here is TEST. The latter is already established.)

[Pogmusic]

I know in my experience in the Army Airborne and HALO ops then later in sport parachuting, it was always difficult to not fall down more than you were blown back.

Remember I was younger when I did this and often shake in me boots when I think of what I did "Back Then". We would get a running start inside a DC-3 (Mister Douglas at Warm Springs, GA) and try to slap the horizontal as we went by. Looking at the video after the jump, no one came close. Obviously you'd be going faster in a Lightning. Granted, if you're in a compressibility dive in a 38, you're not getting out without a lot of hard work.

If I were in a P-38 that was about to crash, I'd get out the quickest way possible -- out the cockpit and over the wing. Just my $.02 worth. Hey, what ever happened to the cents sign?!?!?!?!

[bluehawk15]

The cents sign went the way of common cents!

[Tailspin Turtle]

The most important things I was taught about bailing out was 1) grab the parachute harness with the left hand just below the D ring so you know where it is when you go to pull it (it's not unknown for the harness to shift around in the process of getting out so the D ring may get misplaced) and 2) "pull" the D ring by pushing it straight out from your body, not pulling it straight across your chest, to minimize the bend/friction in the cable tube. We also made it a practice when taking the chute in to get it repacked to put it on in the packing room and "pull" the D ring to 1) rehearse the motion and 2) see how far the pilot chute went back. There were some horror stories about the likelihood of getting dragged to death if the surface winds were over something like 20 knots...