Interesting aircraft, I got a little book
Hi,
Is there any reference to shark mouth aircraft in your book?
I’ve been looking for tail markings for that aircraft.
Cheers,
Alex
Were the Whirlwind squadrons pleased to be re-equipped with Typhoons? Most likely,yes…
Fighter pilots usually prefer more power/speed/armament performance, & the Typhoon had more - with one engine…
Apart from the P 38s doing well against obsolecent Oscars in the Pacific,[& didn`t do so well against the NWE Jagdwaffe].
Most twins were generally seen as easy meat by the more agile single engined fighters.
Even the late war high performance twins [DH Hornet,Do 335, F7 Tigercat,P82 Twin-Mustang],
were out-performed as fighters, 1-on-1 by their single-engined contemporaries.
The later versions of the P-38 such as the J and L models performed much better. There is some truth that the early war P-38’s suffered serious losses, but at the same time they were often outnumbered as the Luftwaffe had not yet been beaten back. They also suffered from poor tactics that failed to make the best of the P-38’s attributes and some pilots engaged in dogfights with the Me109 did not come off well. But many of the planes deficiencies were solved and the P-38L was probably on par with the P-51 effectiveness wise by the end of the war. But the high altitudes of European air war froze the pilots in the “Fork-tailed Devil” and the plane did not perform as well at low level. In the tropics, this wasn’t a problem and the Lightening did well not just against Oscars, but against Zeros as well. I believe modifications pioneered by none other than Charles Lindbergh also increased the performance at low level by 1944. But by then the Mustang became dominant and most ETO P-38 units had been refitted with them…
Again, the pilots involved may reveal their views, those U.S. 8th A.F. pilots transitioning from the P38 to the P51 were generally happy to do so, & the German jagd-flyers felt themselves at an advantage if facing P38s.
Also, Mosquito fighter-bombers needed a single engined escort, whereas - when the Whirlwind squadrons went to Typhoons, their familiar Spitfire escorts found it difficult to match the higher cruising speed of the [even bomb-laden] Typhoons…
& when an escort proved necessary for the B29s, P 38s weren`t tasked for the job - P51s were, as being more effective, both in performance & cost-wise.