Essential and Dispensible WW2 aircraft.

On Oct 6, 4:09 am, Bill Shatzer wrote:
Daryl Hunt wrote:

-snip-

Keeping it in the whatif department. Whatif they had installed decent
Turbos and Supers on the Allisons. What would that have done for even the
P-40. Afterall, later productions on the P-38 and the P-47 would have had
equal or more range and speed of the P-51C and the P-40 would have had near
identical performance and speed.

Dunno. The Merlin equipped P-40F was only about 10 mph faster than the
earlier Allison-fitted P-40E - although obviously better at altitute.

But it still was more than 50 mph short of the P-51B/C's top speed.

I doubt a "super-Allison" would have produced markedly superior results
or placed the P-40 in the P-51's performance class.

The P-40 was, after all, basically an up-engined Hawk 75 (P-36), a 1934
design and a full generation earlier than the P-51 airframe design.

Cheers

As far as I can tell the Merlin engined P-40's used a single stage two
speed
supercharged Merlin equivalent to that used in the Spitfire Mk.V.
Both were 375 mph (approx) aicraft.

The Two stage 66 and 70 merlins added an intercooler and it was these
engines
that transformed both the P-51A to the 440mph P-51B/C/D and the
Spitfire
Mk.IX to a 408-412 mph aircraft.

Had the P-40 gotten the two stage Merlin it might have matched the
Spitfire
Mk IX in speed?

The modification would have required a lengtened nose to and
additional
radiator area to deal with the extra head and to dump heat from the
intercooler.