P-40 Warhawk | Behind the Wings 

makes perfect sense to me. You should be, too!

Ok??so whats the point?

@@hghhhffhfhfhf3401 he was made inside the P-40.

So you where made inside the P-40.

Well, halfway.

i watch it everyday

Exactly, different planes, different roles.

Couldn't have said it better

Absolutely! The p-40 was probably the best fighter for low altitude support operations. The N model hit 378 mph at 10,000 feet, which is FAST!

The p-51 was actually not better in every way than the p-40...the p-40 could roll and turn much quicker, was more durable, and was a fast beast at low altitude. The p-51 was the ultimate long range, high altitude escort fighter.

Yeah, I never really understood the difference!

@@mattdaugherty7865 Warhawk= American, Tomahawk= British P-40 A-D, Kittyhawk= P-40 E and later

Put Darwin, Australia on your list. A Yank squadron of P-40s tried to defend the city when the Japanese came to bomb it, but the former were wiped out. Great museums there featuring the event.

@@mssmith3604 - You know, i did hear that story. Thanls for the tip. Glad we were able to help our allies🙂

The Museum of Naval Aviation in Pensacola is pretty good, too. Many rare aircraft and displays to see. Well worth going to.

Rrudy DeDog I went to Pensacola in 1965 with my CAP cadet squadron we stayed a few days and had a great time. I’m sure it’s much bigger now.

The Brits claim that the Spitfire holds that title, haha. I like both... and the 109... they all have that Iconic WWII look to them.

Third most-produced US-built FIGHTER. Both the Il-2 and Spitfire had more aircraft produced than the P-51, P-47, and P-40.

I was hoping for a Ki-43 Hayabusa, which was the actual fighter that RAAF Kittyhawks and 49th FG USAAF P-40s fought against. Or perhaps a Ki-61 Hien.

It's on the agenda, don't worry!

There were models with the Merlin.

Hunter, Those optical sights were not 'holographic'. They operated on a very simple optical principle. The lens provided a collimated image of the illuminated reticle. Hence they were termed collimating sights. The lens is located exactly one focal length from the reticle. For instance, when you focus the tightest image of the Sun on an ant (I hope you no longer do this! ;) ), the lens is one focal length from the solar image. If you were then to look into the lens at the magnified ant, its virtual image would lie at optical infinity. Meaning that your own eye's lens would be focused exactly as for a very distant object, and not for the true distance of the ant. Back to the sight. Because the collimated image of the reticle appears to lie at optical infinity, it exhibits no parallax. That's the key! Because as the pilot's eye wanders about when maneuvering, or in turbulence, the reticle remains always where the guns are pointing. An iron sight, in the other hand, has two nearby components (the ring and the post/bead). Just a small displacement of the eye from the correct sight line ruins the aim. The collimated optical sight completely overcomes this. The bigger the collimating lens, the farther the eye can move about. For instance, the N-2 sight shown in this video has a 2" diameter collimator. And so the pilot's eye can only move about within the same 2" diameter cylinder and still see the reticle's central pipper. The later N-9 sight (1944) has a bigger 3" lens, thus affording a commensurately larger range of eye displacement. The angled window of the sight merely redirects the collimated image toward the eye, superimposing the reticle upon the scene beyond. The lens does not project the reticle upon the window; said window acts like a beam splitter, combining two images. Depending on the size of the reticle, the diameter of the collimating lens and the distance of the reflector glass above the lens, there will be a maximum distance at which the eye can lie from the sight and still permit see the full reticle. That's because of another benefit of a collimated image; no matter how near or far one is from the sight, the reticle's angular size does not change. If it's 100 mils in diameter, it will be so whether one is reclining back in the seat or leaning right up against the sight. But the apparent size of the sight's reflector plate and collimating lens *do* vary with viewing distance. And so sighting is easier when the pilot leans at least somewhat toward the sight. That's the Coles Notes version. Hope this helps!

@@glennledrew8347 - Thanks for posting that. I too have wondered how the old sights worked. Great research!

Not anyone has access to a rare ww2 jet

there is one at the pensacola navalavation museum

@@seadog1988 Yes but it the person making the videos near that museum

Jacob Qualls The one at Pensacola was actually on loan to a museum near me but I missed the opportunity to see it :(

Cont’d: I’m no different than any other kid wanting to know about his Dad and a legendary fighter plane. Just pending the next response. And I live in AZ, Pima is on the agenda

Call the US Air Force Museum in Dayton. Ask for an historian. Same with NASM. Call them back again, and ask to speak with a historian.

Republic P-47 Thundrebolt - 15,636 North American P-51 Mustang - 15,588 (+ 200 built in Australia, so actually 15,788) Curtis P-40 Warhawk/Kittyhawk - 13,738 Supermarine Spitfire (all marks) - 20,351 Considering how many years the Spitfire was in production I would have expected "far more" of them. Hmm... It seems that the US, however, outproduced the UK in aircraft as a whole (as well as pretty much every other thing imaginable), and they did it over fewer years. England never once produced as many as 27,000 aircraft in any year of the war (over 26,000 for two years only, FAR less in other years), while the US more than doubled UK output once they had entered the war. (Perhaps the UK had to produce so many Spitfires due to losses over the lack of simple fuel injection? They did get shot down an awful lot. Whatever. Apples and oranges.) The UK still quite welcome for all that food, medicine, clothing, fuel, ammo, ships, planes and many, many other things we pretty much gave them for free *before* we came over to save them from starvation and possibly invasion. (Google the war debt to see how much the UK actually paid back for all the US gave them.) Cheerio. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_aircraft_production

@@holton345 The U.S.A and Great Britain signed an agreement known as " lend lease ." The Brits can certainly testify to the fact they got their pouch screwed right clean off. No one, and i mean no one got anything for " free " from the American's as you have noted. As for the Spitfire. She has a very impressive record of E/As shot down. Ta'ra.

The third most American Army built pursuit aircraft of WW2

Il-2, Yakovlev fighters, Messerschmitt bf-109??

Wombat Well, he did say Allied, so the BF is out...but he should have just said American, of course.

Britan was involved in WWII since 1939, but America had been involed since late 1941. The British fought longer, so it makes sense that they built more planes than the Americans.

I guess he did. The cockpit of the P-40 semms to be a bit widened. He would have difficulties to get into the 109. The cockpit of the 109 is rather tight - even for slim guys.

I hope she had help.

I mean... the P-40 was great for it's time... it was just out-classed and out-dated by the start of the war... The Germans were scared of the P40 in North Africa... they were basically forced into boom and zoom tactics because those six 50 cals were lethal if you could get them on target.

@@renardgrise valid point...i often wonder if it could have become another Cinderella story like the p51 after the switch from the Allison to the Merlin....id like to have seen a p40 with a Merlin....if they ever built one in that configuration I've never heard of it...but we all know that the p51 had fair low altitude performance with it American made Allison but it was the Merlin swap that made it the Legend that it became. I'm more of a p47 fan...i love that it was so rugged and after the p51 took over as bomber escorts....the p47's seek and destroy missions against trains and infrastructure seems like it would have been an extremely fun and exciting type of mission to take a jug into.

@@davy1458 They tried that actually with the P40-F... While it helped the high altitude performance some, it wasn't the match made in heaven that the P-51 and Merlin was... the P40 airframe was just too heavy really... Funny thing, the Allison actually performed great at low altitude ;-).

Scooter George I’m guessing not because IL-2 would have been #1

Quite a bit of estrogen in that, umm, man..

I fucking knew I would see a comment like this.

rodhigh7 can say both but BF is better ,even messerschmitt bought the design.But it was original designed by the Bayrische flugzeugwerk (BF)

Lol! I was thinking something similar

Actually both are correct. Even Messerschmitt referred to the aircraft in internal documents as the Me109. MB