The Insane Engineering of the P-38 Lightning

Comments · 2.2K

• SH

  @ShaneGoodson · 1 year ago

  I still find it mind-blowing that the same person, in a single career had a role in designing both this and the F-117, just the pace of change from WW2 to the end of the cold war was nuts.

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• BI

  @Bill42.1 · 1 year ago

  The P-47 was NOT built for ground attack. It was built for high altitude performance but was used in ground attack at the end of the war because it was rugged.

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• KS

  @kswg2009 · 1 year ago

  When I was a kid my Grandpa and I built a plastic model kit of this plane and decades later would see him holding it to ‘fly’ it around the living room like he was as a kid. Miss him!

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• OH

  @OhNoNotAgain42 · 1 year ago

  In the late 80’s, I was a Mechanical Engineering student at UCSB.  Our Dynamics professor was Dr. Miriam, who had semi retired from UCB. If you took Dynamics at any university in the 80’s, it’s likely you used his textbook.  He told us a story about the P-38.  He was a young design engineer at Lockheed during WWII.  When the P-38 started flying in combat, several crashed and the pilot’s were found decapitated.  They were all grounded.  The engineers found that a flywheel in the starboard engine was shearing its shaft and flying right at the pilot’s head.  The design engineers had failed to take into account the angular momentum force generated by some sort of combat turn.  The shaft was redesigned and retrofitted.  This was his verbal introduction to the chapter on Angular Momentum. He used to lecture right from the book.  But he had lots of these stories that weren’t written.

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• MA

  @martaskali925 · 1 year ago

  The P-38 is and most likely always will be the most beautiful airplane ever built, at least to me. Seeing and hearing it fly is always an experience unlike any other.

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• XB

  @xb70valkyriech · 1 year ago

  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gb4UBK53sGQ&amp;t=564">9:24</a> slight correction, the P-47 was designed from the outset to be a high altitude fighter, but all those characteristics described also made it very good at ground attack.

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• DR

  @DroppopOfficial · 1 year ago

  Finally! This is one of my favorite WWII planes. Thanks for making a video on this.

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• QU

  @Quadnick · 1 year ago

  If you were intrigued by Kelly Johnson and Skunk Works, I highly recommend reading Skunk Works by Ben Rich. It&apos;s his memoir of his time at the company, and how he eventually took the reigns of it from Kelly after he named Ben his successor. It&apos;s a great read that details what it was like working for, and with, Kelly Johnson, and the impact Kelly had on the industry as a whole. It also provides a look behind the curtain into some of the US&apos;s most top secret programs, such as the U-2 spy plane, F-117 Nighthawk and SR-71 Blackbird. Very interesting and well written book, and one I consider a must-read for warplane enthusiasts.

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• MA

  @mannubooo · 1 year ago

  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gb4UBK53sGQ&amp;t=544">9:04</a> sleek v12 inline, that&apos;s one funny upsy

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• AN

  @antagonist99 · 1 year ago

  There was a massive redesign of the P-38&apos;s engine setup between the earlier G and intermediate H version, and the later J and L. The leading edge intercoolers were replaced with fuel tanks because they were rendered inadequate by the increased horsepower. This is why the engine nacelles on the J and L had a different profile. They included a much more capable intercooler below the engine itself.<br><br>Also, a better metric for performance at altitude would have been a comparison between horsepower, not level speed. The P-38&apos;s horsepower up to its critical altitude went largely unchanged, unlike with exclusively supercharger-boosted engine setups such as on the Spitfire.<br><br>Plus, even with purely supercharged designs, there were ways to prevent excessive throttling loses, either by using a hydraulically coupled supercharger, or a swirl throttle.<br><br>On the topic of compressibility: It wasn&apos;t just the change in flow over the wings themselves. The changed characteristics also caused the tailplane to encounter flow at a higher angle of attack, therefore actually <b>increasing</b> lift on the tail and thereby pushing the nose more steeply into compressibility.

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• CH

  @chsfrnc · 1 year ago

  The wing mounted intercoolers were only present on the pre J model 38s. The P-38 J and L moved the intercooler from the wing to the boom, this changed the forward profile of the boom to have three intake ports, instead of two found in early models. This slightly increased drag but drastically increased engine performance and had the added benefit of allowing more fuel for increased range.<br><br>The information provided for the video is good, but not completely accurate for the design being shown.

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• TH

  @Thaaashley · 1 year ago

  From insane to unique, can’t wait to figure out why the change happened

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