"Big John" wrote in message
...
Dudley

Never flew a light bird like yours and Lenoch's with all the crap
removed. All my time was in a combat ready bird with guns and ammo.
Got the fuselage tank down to 20 gallons which was supposed to give a
neutral CG (or some such) before spinning or other extreme maneuvers.

Max turns I made at one time was 6 and was winding up pretty good.

Of course we weren't supposed to spin but in those days all us young
ones thought we were invincible ). Of course a lot got bit in the
bird when their luck ran out but that's the way it was.

I'm assuming Lenoch is reading this posting and I wonder how much
weight got taken out of the 'civilian' birds?

I flew D-10's to D-30's. Each version got heavier and didn't fly as
well in a dog fighting situation. If we were going to go up and rat
race it behoved you to go and get one of the early (light) birds )

You would have enjoyed the 51 at a light GW with minimum fuel. It was a joy
to fly.
I knew Douglas Bader fairly well. We used to run up our phone bills talking
about fighter tactics during the war. We both agreed that the "dogfight era"
came to a screeching halt during the Battle of Britain when just about
everybody realized that the way to survive was to avoid the left side of the
envelope. Ps wasn't a factor then in ACM theory as you know I'm sure. Boyd
and Christie and Rutowski hadn't figured out the EM concept yet, but you
guys were using it without realizing it "officially" :-)
Actually, Chennault had it right way back in the late thirties if they had
only listened to him. By the time you guys got in the fight, it was pretty
well doctrine that the way to both survive and rack up a score was to keep
the energy up; use one carefully flown pursuit pass, going through the angle
off spectrum from lag to lead when in firing parameters; zeroing the ball
and firing, then diving through a planned overshoot in the plane of the
target's motion.
ACM has come a long way since the early days hasn't it? Hell, now you don't
even have to see the *******s!! :-))
Dudley