That's what I heard before. Makes you wonder. Who would have thought of
that? "Oh, buffeting, let' s swap the engines and see if that works."
More likely story is they accidentally installed the engines wrong and
someone said, "Hey, this thing performs better this way". You can see I have
a lot of confidence in American ingenuity.

--
BobF.
"Bertie the Bunyip" wrote in message
.. .
Dudley Henriques wrote in
:

Bob F. wrote:
Ok Dudley,

Let's get into an area of your expertise. I've always wondered this.
On a P-38, when they first came out the Allison's turned counter
rotating (top blade towards cabin, as you would expect). But after
the first 12 or so proto's and for the rest of production, they
interchanged the engines. That is each engine's top blade rotated
away from the aircraft. Why? Serious, I really want to know.

Well Bob, I hope it's a friendly request and I'll take it this way.

To be absolutely truthful with you, P38 design and development really
isn't in my area of expertise but I'll give it a shot based loosely on
something an old friend Jeff Ethell once mentioned to me about the
engines. As you now they were Allison V1710's and thy were handed
inward in the XP38. The prop swing was indeed changed I believe in th
second run or even back as far as the YP38.
I'll admit it always puzzled me as well. I knew the Brits didn't like
the handed engines and even our side had maintanence issues. For many
years I thought it might have had something to do with the flow
direction linkages on the turbochargers but I believe the change was
made after gunnery testing indicated the change would improve the
airplane's stability in the gun firing equation.
Not absolutely certain, but I believe I recall Jeff mentioning it in
this context.


It was due to buffeting of the tailplane during high speed flight. The
flow from the props was supposed to be the problem and they decided to
try and they decided to try swapping the eninges around to see if it
made any difference. It did , so they they just left it like that.
As for the brits not liking it. I'd have no doubt about that. They
suffer more than any country I know of from "not invented here"
syndrome. If they didn't like 'em they didn't have to take 'em. they
could have continued along with their cute little Ansons and
Beaufighters.


Bertie