Warbird Information Exchange

The fact is that the P-40 was more complicated than a P-51 to build. As Stephen Grey said if it had been re-engined with the Merlin 60 series it would have been a mighty fine ship. The limitation was above about 15,000' due to Allison performance [or lack thereof at altitude]...

The P40 made many aces in many theatres of WW2...

Years ago I worked with an ex ETO B-24 pilot who re-upped for a second tour flying ferry. Flew everything in the inventory at least once, he said. The natural question from me, of course, was which aircraft would he choose to take home as a free souvenir if they offered? He grinned and promptly answered "oh, the P-40, no question about it!" When asked why, he said you could trim it out in cruise, then fly it simply by leaning in the directions you would otherwise move the stick, and you could fly all the way to your destination that way. Said it was the only airplane he knew that would do that.

Now that was a long time ago, and I doubt old Frank Fronek is still with us so I can't go back and check, but I'm 99.9% that was what came out of him. I thought it was the coolest thing I ever heard, and still do.

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Cheers,
Kurt Maurer
League City, Texas

PIC, Ford 6600 pulling Rhino batwing up and down the runway

Anyone have a link to video of that loop/snap roll maneuver? My Dad told me about doing that in a flight check ride in Advanced school when the instructor told him to show him "his stuff". Not sure I know enough to picture what that looks like. Thanks,

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"There are old pilots and bold pilots but few old, bold pilots."

I video taped his whole routine one year at Arlington from on top the B-25. I'll
look around for it.
I saw his P-40E routine around 1977 and it seemed a lot like the T-6 one

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Don't touch my junk!!

Quote my Dad, from my book "Fire From the Clouds":

The AT-6 was the single engine advanced trainer and it was quite an airplane. It had a
650 HP radial engine, retractable landing gear and was an excellent acrobatic aircraft.
We learned to fly formation, instruments, cross country navigation, both day and night
and all in all, became accomplished pilots in this airplane. The AT-6 was equipped with a
.30 caliber machine gun with which we learned both air to ground and air-to-air
gunnery.

I truly loved the airplane and became fairly adept at acrobatics. One of my favorite
memories involves a no-notice check ride that I received after several weeks at Moore
Field. The Captain that was checking me had me go through a number of basic
maneuvers, a stall and spin recovery and then he asked me to do some acrobatics for him.
I did a couple rolls and some conventional maneuvers and then since I appeared to be
free to do whatever I wished, I decided to show him something I had been practicing on
my solo flights. After clearing the area below me, I dove the aircraft and started a
loop. When we became inverted at the top, I snap rolled the airplane 360 degrees, ending
the roll inverted again and then proceeded to complete the loop. There was conspicuous
silence before the Captain called me on the interphone from the rear cockpit and asked,
“What was that?” I told him it was a loop with a snap roll at the top. He said, “Okay,
take me home.” I couldn’t tell if he was upset with me or what? I landed the airplane,
taxied in, parked and shut down the engine. The Captain got out, said “Thanks, good
ride.” and walked off. I never saw or heard from him again. I did get to fly the P-40
however. The same kind of airplane I saw at the Mitchell Field air show!”

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"There are old pilots and bold pilots but few old, bold pilots."

I've put in 60 hours on the VWoC P-40 in the last 2 seasons.

It does indeed have fine ailerons. Unlike most WWII fighters, you can bury the stick in your legs with the strength of one arm (you don't need 2 hands, like some of them), and when you do, it really rolls.

In fact rolls could hardly be simpler in a prop airplane. Rudder coordination is a very minor issue, and a beginner's roll is merely get 240 mph on the clock, pitch well up, hold that nose up attitude for a second, then put the stick all the way over and keep it there until you're right side up again. Very gratifying. I can coach a newbie into doing it, no-sweat. (Ours is a dual-control.)

It has a wing that is complicated to build (5-spars more or less, each with different angled flanges), but is very strong (hence the airplane's use as a fighter-bomber). It also has an airfoil that works well for turning, in that it's conventional (non-laminar), and about halfway in thickness between a Hurricane and a Spit.

Believe it or not, Donovan Berlin designed that wing for high-altitude dogfighting. He believed the aircraft would increase in weight 50% over its service life, and would double in engine power. The wing is a blend of 2 airfoils, and he paid a great deal of attention to spanwise flow, and tip design (Source: Whitney, "V's for Victory").

The Allison has a built-in low-volume supercharger, about 8:1. But the plan was to also have a turbocharger feeding that, as in the P-38. A 2-stage system. That was the idea from the start. Of course if that had happened, the entire history of the aircraft would have been different. But the USAAC was unable to procure a reliable turbocharger in 1939, when Curtiss received the order for the first 500 P-40s, and by then they were under the gun, and Curtiss was under heavy pressure to get fighters built and out of the front door as rapidly as possible. No development delays were permitted.

In 1940/41 Donovan Berlin went to RR in England, and was mistakenly shown the 60-series Merlin on the test bench. He came back excited as hell, thinking the P-40 would finally get the high-altitude engine he'd designed it for. But when he found out the new engine was going into the P-51, not the P-40, he was utterly disgusted, and quit the company. He left Curtiss and went to GM. (Source: same)

Anyway, I've found it a wonderful airplane to fly. It can be a handful, like all the WWII fighters, and its 1935 gear and flap systems are a real "gotcha", but it's a very honest airplane. And the Allison starts well. (We have a Bud Wheeler engine.) In fact, I only have an inertial starter on it (5 blades, that's all I get), and it's enough. I see the Merlins crank-crank-crank-stackfire-crank-crank, but the Allison simply likes to start.

Being current on the thing, I'm quite happy to answer any questions, if you like.

Dave

I don't recall any starting troubles with my Merlin, except when cold enough to slow down cranking. Mine was the stock 12 volt system,some of the ones now have been modified to be 24 volt, which doesn;t seem necessary, and uses a heavier battery. You've got lot's of people flying the two Spits in Canada and they may be each doing their own procedure. The pilot notes give a chart of how many primer pumps to expect to give, thus need more in cold weather, perhaps 4 strokes or 7 strokes. When the engine has run , none or one at most to avoid fire. Fire in the stacks show you have overprimed, which is easy to do when warm.

If you crank the engine with the mags off( despite what the log says) it works best and does not kick back like an engine does when the switch is on before the start. Thus, if you keep the switch off until the engine fires until you switch the mags on, it is smoother and with no kickbacks, especially good for a cold engine startup. I recall one Spit that in Canada whose Merlin was harder than normal to start, am not sure why. It was a rebuild and not factory stock.

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Bill Greenwood
Spitfire N308WK

Thank you very much Dave! I enjoy your likness for the P-40 and enjoyed some first hand experiance on flying it. Ok maybe I am jealous too but it's great that there are people out there trying to show some good light on the old Warhawk!

Questions:

1. Often it has been said the P-40 can max up to around 500mph in a dive. But that it does take some right rudder to keep the plane in line. Any experiance on this?

2. I have read a few accounts of the P-40 entering a deadly spin. But that seems to have been only a few cases. Other pilots commented to never have that problem.

Thanks Dave,
Nathan

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I have only one brief P-40 flight, that with Bill Destefani in his nice one that Fred Sebby used to fly so much. I was impressed by the ailerons, very light and the roll rate was quick. Don't know how the max turn rate would compare to a Spitfire, didn't go that much gs. The Alison sounds good and smooth on the ground and from outside the plane, but in flight it did not seem quite as smooth as my Merlin, really a small impression of that.

I think the pilot view from the P-40 is inferior to the Spitfire, again this is a brief impression of one flight a long time ago.
One thing I do remember is how heavy the tailwheel steering is on the ground. Just taxiing in is like doing leg squats, it really reqiures a lot of effort. Don't know if they are all like that.
It was great fun to trade flights with Tiger He flew my Spit well, of course, but rather conservatively. I was a little surprised from a guy that spend his time at near 500 mph in Strega. He is a top pilot, and years later when he flew one of the Spitfires at the gathering in Phoenix, it was like he had been doing it for years. He'd wheel land the P-40, but had no trouble with a 3 point landing in that Spitfire on the runway at Carefree which is about 4000 feet.
I remembe that day we swapped flights at Madera, and how much fun we had, until about an hour later the ugly side of waribrds came out, when Dave Zueschel came over in his F-86, with a T-38, and after the fly by, the 38 flew on, Dave did a pass to land, the engine quit, and even though he made a nice gear up glide and touchdown on the runway,, the plane had underwing tanks, and it burst into flame, and Dave was lost. I didn't know him well but he seemed a nice guy and his the engines he built had a good reputation. The aluminum and magnesium fire had a nasty purple tinge to the black smoke. It is times like this, on a good day when everyone is enjoying things so much and then the world changes, and you are sort of in shock, don't really know why this is or should be.If you have some believe in God, some sense of religeon , as I think most of us do, you may find yourself questioning it on a day like that, just why does this happen. If you are like me, you probalby don't feel like flying for awhile, may even think about quitting, but then you sort of put this in a small guarded compartment of your mind,where it is there but kept out of your thinking most days, and you go on flying. You can feel a tiny part of what it must have been like in the military with all the losses.

If anyone new was coming into warbirds, or perhaps sport flying in general, and they really wanted my advice(unlikely, the average pilot already knows everything) and what I have learned over about 30 years, I could talk for hours and maybe days on the good things, but if I was telling the whole truth, I'd also have to warn them about this downside, and if you are going to be part of this, you have to be prepared to lose some friends. I say friends, because even if we don't know the person, we share the same game. You can try fly as smartly and safely as possible and maybe you will be on of the lucky ones whom it does not happen to directly.

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Bill Greenwood
Spitfire N308WK

I was also there that morning at Madera when the F-86 crashed. Everyone was standing about laughing and joking, the low pass by the jets, then boom. I flew with Bill in the Spitfire the next morning, you could see a black mark that started right on the numbers and extended 3/4 down the runway then went off to right.
At the time it was believed the A/C hit some pyros for one of the flying acts that day. Years later I wondered if the point the jet left the runway was where the controls finally seized due to loss of hydraulic pressure.
I also ride motorcycles, and my wife flagged for SCCA racing, there is a certain risk with any form of "going fast", but it is never easy when we lose someone.

Good calculating on his part. The wing was designed for the Hawk Model 75, whose prototype had a 900hp engine. Service models had a 1050hp engine and loaded weights around 5650 pounds. The P-40N had a 1460hp engine and loaded weight around 8850 pounds.

I have read that Berlin was unhappy with the location and shape of the radiator. Some sources say that it was initially relocated from mid-fuselage to the chin at the request of the Curtiss-Wright marketing department, but I doubt that. Reportedly Berlin did feel that lengthening the fuselage on the M/N to cure stability problems was fixing the wrong end of the airplane, and he wanted to redesign the front but there was never time to do so.

It's great to read the pireps from you guys who have flown them. From a ground hugger's perspective, it can at least be argued that it is the best airplane ever designed for having teeth painted on it.

August