Morgans

I remember reading something about the mass balancer as you call it
but can't remember what it was the solution for. It could have been to
prevent the elevator from causing trouble when in the shock wave at
high mach?

Here is what I found on Internet. They say the strip was on the bottom
of the wing but I thougth I remembered it to be on the top. In any
event it stopped the dive problem.

Quote

Earlier Lightnings had problems with high-speed dives. When the
airspeed reached a sufficiently high value, the controls would
suddenly lock up and the Lightning would tuck its nose down, making
recovery from the dive difficult. In the worst case, the wings of the
Lightning could be ripped off if the speed got too high. This problem
caused the Lightning often to be unable to follow its Luftwaffe
opponents in a dive, causing many of the enemy to be able to escape
unscathed. The problem was eventually traced to the formation of a
shock wave over the wing as the Lightning reached transonic speeds,
this shock wave causing the elevator to lose much of its
effectiveness. The problem was not cured until the advent of the
P-38J-25-LO, which introduced a set of compressibility flaps under the
wing which changed the pattern of the shock wave over the wing when
they were extended, restoring the function of the elevator.

Unquote

Big John

On Tue, 24 Feb 2004 16:03:44 -0500, "Morgans"
wrote:


"Big John" wrote in message

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

Wasn't part of that fix also a mass balancer on the elevator, that was a
blob raised up on an arm above the elevator?