"George R. Gonzalez" wrote:

"Cecil Turner" wrote in message
...

Make sure it also covers his work in the Pacific during WWII as a civilian
tech rep in
front-line units (flight test and profiling P-38s that resulted in nearly
double
operational range). Provides a bit of balance.

rgds,
KTF

I've always wondered about this..... I first read abot his range-enhancing
exploits in reader's Digest when I was about 13 yrs old, and it greatly
impressed me at the time.

Since then, I've picked up a few old airplane tech manuals, and at least in
the B-17, B-29, B-24, P-51 ones I've seen, they ALL have charts in the back
with all kinds of airspeed-vs-manifold pressure vs rpm vs range curves.
The B-24 manual IIRC even goes to great lengths explaining the right way to
lean out the engines, and several scary stories about the crews that never
made it back to base because they forgot to go to lean-running mode.

So did the P-38 go out to the pilots without any range vs airspeed vs rpm vs
mixture charts??

Or did the pilots ignore the charts, or what?

Methinks the Linberg story is a bit too neat to be totally correct.

Regards,

George

The guys were a little too busy staying out of someone's gun sight to
experiment. Their training didn't push such things ether.