Most of those are not manufacturer’s figures, they are tests at the manufacturer’s plant by Army personnel.
Fascinating account by O’Brien. I have read a million of these. The recurring theme is that flying a single seat fighter in combat was not very romantic, but mostly lots of hard boring work. Regarding his comments about the P-39, it was a challenging aircraft to fly considering the pilots were still in flight training and had just come out of the AT-6 Texan. Again, it was too heavy and handling benefited greatly from reducing the weight as the Russians flew it. On the other hand, Chuck Yeager maintained that the P-39 was the best airplane he ever flew up until he was assigned the later model Mustang with the two-stage Merlin engine in 1944. Yeager also maintained that he didn’t know anyone who didn’t like flying the P-39 and that he would have gladly flown it in combat. Oh, well.
O’Brien mentions a book titled “Nanette” by Edwards Park. I read that book and also the companion book “Angels Twenty” by the same author. The former was fiction and the latter sequel was factual, both covering the same subject. In both books Park details his tour of duty as a P-39 pilot from December 1942 in Port Moresby, New Guinea defending that area from numerically superior Japanese forces based in the northern side of New Guinea. Park details bomber interception missions where the P-39 LOADED WITH A 110 GALLON (700 pound) DROP TANK climbed to 24,000’ to intercept Betty bombers. Why they attempted a pure bomber intercept mission with a drop tank is a mystery to me, but the P-39 was always equipped with these tanks according to the author. After they climbed above the bombers and began their attack dive the drop tanks were jettisoned and his plane felt “light as a feather” and he remarked that he wished he could fly it around for a while to experience the greatly increased performance. Of course he continued his attack instead. He detailed numerous intercept missions where his squadron climbed well above 20,000’, although mostly these missions resulted in no contact with the enemy due to the faulty nature of their early warning ground radar mistaking bombers for a flock of birds or a cloud formation. Remember these P-39s weighed 8,300 pounds including the 700 pound drop tanks when the Russian P-39s weighed 7,100 pounds and almost never carried drop tanks, so it is no wonder that their performance was substantially better. This should dispel the myths that P-39s could not intercept Japanese bombers or fly at high altitudes, even at their normal American weights.
I’ll admit that I am a P-39 “homer” but If you read enough about the P-39 you will see that the Russian combat weight reduction was very beneficial. Why didn’t the Army do the same thing, especially since it could have been accomplished at forward air bases? During the early war of 1942 the Americans did not have the experience of the Russians who had been fighting the Luftwaffe since June 1941. We viewed heavy firepower and heavy armor as more beneficial than better performance. The Russians saw that the firepower and armor protection were still more than adequate even after removing some of those items that they deemed excessive. and the resulting performance gains put the Airacobra on a par with the German fighters, and certainly substantially better than contemporary Japanese fighters.
