Power of Merlin (P51) Engine

A beautiful thing... I wish I had a half a dozen or so siting in my garage... will have to settle for some 350s

I know, todays been a really drag day here too. If that would have been an F16 , that tree would have been uprooted and blown to Connecticut.

I recall reading that when we sent a bunch of early P38's to England in WWII, they stuck Merlins on the plane and, contrary to the skunk works guys telling them to mount the engines so that they counter rotate wrt to each other, the Brits mounted the engines all pulling in one direction. The result was that the early P38 got a bad rap for always flipping over and crashing right after takeoff. LOTSA torque in one direction and the plane would rotate right into the ground.

After the D series and the Studie's and GE's and Merlins were properly mounted, the p38 became the fastest and deadliest plane until the Me206 in 1945 (too late to ahve any effect. Thank Goodness that Hitler was a tactical and logistical douche bag)

P51 Mustang: Go fast and turn left.

You have two stories crossed up i.e. those of the 38 and the 51.

38s Were mainly used in the Pacific war. The 38 was a long range fighter with heavy guns firing straight away from that center compartment and no need to synch them or shoot around props, and was ideal for the vast distances in the Pacific. It was one of our fastest in a straight line but it was a mid 30s design and not maneuverable enough to go dogfighting with the German fighters of the day. It always had Allison engines to my knowledge.

The 51 started out with an Allison engine which didn't have the power to make it a top-gun style fighter but pilots noted its superior flying capabilities early on and they did substitute a Merlin engine and it really did become the topgun fighter of the war. As I read it the 51 had to be flown off with the engine at less than full power due to torque; nobody would have built a twin engined fighter with props spinning the same way.

A beautiful thing... I wish I had a half a dozen or so siting in my garage... will have to settle for some 350s

Try this:
http://www.bananahobby.com/2128.html

under $200...

Thats because by 44 when everything was merely divvying up post war spoils it was no longer needed in Europe until the Germans unveiled their 2 jets and were knocking bombers out of the air like clay pigeons. However, as designed, the p38 was first sent to England where the Brits fucked up the design by non counterotating engines. By the time of the E and F series, it was the fastest flying thing and the Germans called it "The forked tail dragon". It made its bones in the PAcific but it was THE aerial recon plane and the first long distance fighter bomber with great speed and altitude.And the final configurtion of the Ge mod Allisons made it a very long distance fighter.

Spits were faster than Mustangs (which was basically the same plane with a less powerful but longer range engine). A Mustang could beat up a spit if the Mustang could just wait till the SPits ran out of gas. The p38 ran circles around all of em .

The two super aircraft of WW-II were the Mustang and the B29.

The Mustang (51), via several fuel tank mods, was ultimately made into the "impossible" fighter which had the range to follow the bombers all the way to Berlin and back and defeat all of the German prop-driven aircraft when they got there.

The 38 was remarkable for what it was and remained in use throughout the war but was not viewed as a competitive topgun style fighter during the last two years of the war and was ultimately not used to escort the 29s over Japan; 51s were brought in for that purpose.

Once I flew an old WWII bomber a friend bought from military surplus and found out it's incredibly tiring physical work - no equivalent of power steering.

Major advances in RC aircraft in the last five or ten years:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfyNTT9GpAs&feature=player_embedded