Hi, good video, The P 39 could out fly the Zero and Bf 109 however it had poor super charging and did not perform well above 15,000 ft. It stalled much like other aircraft except when the CG became critical with the cannon amo expended. The Russians always carried full loads and were careful after combat not to stall the aircraft. The zero could be defeated by forcing it to dive and pick up speed where the zero had a slow turn rate. However never turn more than one time with a zero . American pilots had a learning curve to overcome in combat and many were lost in this time. Both the P 40 and P 39 held the line and took the fight to the enemy until the P47 and P38 and P51 became front line weapons. "If you can't out run him and you can't out clime him ; then you will have to fight , and to get home you will have to win."
A well-known air ace, Lt. Col. Boyd D. “Buzz” Wagner, who’d fought the Japanese in P-40s in the Philippines on Dec. 8, 1941, was assigned to fly with the 40th Squadron. “Wagner went from first lieutenant to lieutenant colonel in just five months during those difficult early days of the war in the Pacific. He had a reputation for being a hot, aggressive pilot. They made him chief of fighter aviation in New Guinea and although he had not previously flown the P-39 in combat, he came down to join us and shot down three Japanese fighters in a single action, bringing his total number of aerial victories to eight. At that point, using a P-39 to shoot down a Zero was almost unheard of.”
Underrated aircraft. Couldn't spin that sucker without about 3,000 meters to recover, so some maneuvers were out of the question. And yet, our Russian allies were able to use its strengths to develop successful group tactics. the "Belochka" (Bell, or Little Bell) was beloved by Russian pilots, having been flown by the leading ace of the USSR, Aleksandr Pokryshkin, who scored 47 of his 59 kills flying the P-39. The USSR declined to give him a lend-lease P-63 King Cobra because he had already garnered to much praise for a foreign built aircraft.
Why is it that people criticize the Cobra? Good aircraft with inexperienced American pilots early on that tried to use it for a role it was not designed to do,namely high altitude work. Designed and built around a heavy cannon to destroy bombers hence it's short range and devastating firepower is it any wonder it didn't do well against fighters in the Pacific. Also the Americans at the time weren't using very good tactics. A number of US fighters sold to other countries gave a good service with modifications(eg Buffalo in Finnish service ) by shedding excess weight and unnecessary equipment. Interesting how the Cobra was respected by the Germans when in Russian service but not by its own country. One has to remember that it was a pre war design. They fought with what they had and held the line.Enough said.
Wonderful action, tks bro, this kind of art made my life very better, please don't stop never! Please, make a movie with the brazilian Jugs bombing the german lines in Italy, terrible flak, we will love!
@Steven 197106 Subscribed mate! Absolutely love this sim! I bought the original il-2 Sturmovik when it was released and still have it boxed with the great cover artwork and booklet! Oleg Maddox was so ahead of the time with this sim, It still holds up well today! Flight model and physics are still amazing IMO and there is just so much well documented flyable content, The graphics are still really acceptable to me given it's age and i imagine it would work fine on a current potatoe PC these days? I use 1946 with the excellent BAT and VP mods that are available on the SAS website, I think i will give this C.U.P version a try and do a comparison, A true classic combat flight sim, Especially as you can pick 1946 up for a paltry few ££ these days and mod the crap out of it, Bargain!
ahhh! Steven please stop making these videos, they're way too addictive and I should be getting work done right now! hahah, just kidding, they're great and keep them coming. Nice work man!
I understand that Russian pilots liked this acft, while U.S., Brit & Austin pilots were 'un-fond' of it. Cool looking, but just didn't do well, at all, in Pacific theater.
A common problem was the plane's nerve-wracking flight characteristics that, if put into a flat spin (which was fairly easily considering the center of mass), the plane was incredibly difficult to correct, almost impossible in fact.
Good show. When taxiing, did you just use your rudder pedals? Chuck Yeager said that the P-39 was the best plane to taxi out, because you could rest your arms out the doors, and just use your feet to steer out the the runway without touching any other controls.
The Russians seem to understand the "iron dog" in ways USAAF did not and terry wayne Hamilton correctly observes it is better then you think. I always consider the P39's in the original IL2 patched to 1.20 as the real hidden gems in the sim....
p39 has the speed advantage, its your fight to enter or exit. Remember, they had the long flight home, burn up their gas, sucker them with rope a dope, extend and come back in hot and smoke em!
The P-39 didn’t do well in the Pacific because American pilots at that time were clueless on how to execute proper BnZ tactics. If they flew the P-39s like how the AVG were flying their P-40s, they would have done just fine against Zeros.
dogeness True. P400 could have been refitted 7x 30-06 AP MGs across; 2x wings and 2x upper cowling deck and one out of the nose hub. VF versus VF variant in Pacific Theater. Quite a spread, with a the no-aim hub gun.
I understand that Russian pilots liked this acft, while U.S., Brit & Austin pilots were 'un-fond' of it. Cool looking, but just didn't do well, at all, in Pacific theater.
Same for the Curtiss p40, loved by russians and rejected by British. I think the difference was in the different teatre of war. On western sky you had to match with a complete radar coperture and sophisticated fighters while on russia a rought, non-top preformances plane was better. This explain also the large number of Stuka pilots till the end, while on western front it would be a suicide since the first stages of war.
