WIX Archives

Re: P-38

Posted by Steve Hinton on Fri Mar 07, 2003 09:34:38 AM

In reply top Re: P-38 posted by Christer on Fri Mar 07, 2003 02:59:43 AM

I spoke with Tony Levier about this issue. He told me that the first 38 had inward turning props to counter single engine flight. What happened was the prop rotation caused the swirl of air back across the wings at slow speed in the direction of the rotation of the props. This gave the wings a false angle of attack on take off. It added distance to the take off roll because the Lightning had to rotate to a higher angle to get the low speed lift. He said however the stall speed in flight was not affected because of the low or no power output of the engines. As for the vibration, he said Lockheed was under so much pressure to get it into production that they were trying many things to solve a lot of problems. Flight testing issues were not well understood, even though a lot was written, and sometimes 2 or 3 things were changed to solve a problem then tested on a single flight. This was his take on it and it made good sence to me.

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