Dan

The P-38 had high speed dive problems. After a number crashed they
went back and retrofitted them with 'dive' brakes (narrow strips on
top of wing that could be raised to increase drag). These slowed the
bird down enough it could be pulled out

The P-47 also had some dive problems. It wanted to tuck at high speed
in a dive. To recover you kept full throttle on and when you got to a
lower altitude you slowed down in the thicker air and regained enough
control to recover.

The P-51 was red lined at 505 mph. I have had it up to that speed and
didn't have any problems recovering from dive.

I have friends who were in Europe and told of far exceeding the 505
red line when getting away from 109/190's. The 109 had a structural
problem in their tail and it would come off if they got too fast in a
dive (per word passed to our fighter jocks).

All of this in a time and land far away )

Big John

On Tue, 24 Feb 2004 11:58:03 GMT, "Blueskies" wrote:

If I remember correctly, the nose down full throttle was a tactic used to escape the zero's. They knew they would not
break the plane and the enemy often did. Same was true of the Wildcat, no limitation, plane would reach terminal
velocity...