The B12 (XII) Forum, home of the 'Front Porch, y'all' at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

The twin engines in the P38 were viewed as an asset in the Pacific also.  That Wasp twin radial was a massive engine. 

I am now curious why the F4U had a supercharger while the P47 got a turbocharger, perhaps the less prevalent high altitude combat was a factor.

My Dad told me that the night they went down, they taxiid out on their usual plane and had a "runaway supercharger" during run up, and had to return to get another plane.  That second plane was listed as having gone down due to mechanical malfunction shortly after takeoff, but my Dad said he knew he had rolled down the radar dome before they went in and that meant they were at cruise altitude.  The official report and his account don't square, which is not a shock.  The were in the ocean for several hours.

He said the only way he could have gotten out was that the radar dome hit water first and broke the fuselage open and he floated free, his normal egress was convoluted.  The copilot went through the wind screen and the flight engineer went right after him and was relatively unhurt.  I met the copilot once, his forehead was sloped back at a weird angle from the crash.  The engineer was a man from NY named Lamica about whom my dad thought the world, and later he went missing on a flight to NZ for R&R.

I got in contact with his nephew, a Navy LtCmdr, in 2005, somehow, the family had no word on how Lamica was killed.  Maybe his mom did but she never talked about it.

I was chatting with him when I got my own "news" and lost track after that.

The R-2800 engine had a mechanical supercharger. Different variants of the R-2800 had different models of supercharger, dependent on what altitude requirements were for the type of airplane it was going to be installed in.
The P-47 had a turbosupercharger in the rear fuselage in addition to the engine-driven supercharger.  The F4U and F6F used variants of the R-2800 without turbosupercharging.
The Allison V-1710 engines of the P-38 also had mechanical superchargers.  But then each one got a turbosupercharger that sat on top of the boom where it crossed the wing.
We were behind on mechanical supercharging because the USAAC/USAAF had not identified a need for fighters to fight at high altitude until well after we got into the war.
Was your Dad on a P-61?

Picture

That helicopter is a relative of the Magnum, P.I., chopper.

It got started with the Army's OH-6 Cayuse scout helicopter, built by Hughes Helicopters.  Within Hughes, it was known as the Model 369.

Upgraded and nice-ified for civilian sales, it became the Hughes 500.  Hughes Helicopters long ago got swallowed up and it is now MD Helicopters, part of the McDonell-Douglass conglomerate.  The versions of the original are now the MD500 and MD530.

It's a great helicopter.  I've got about 0.5 hour of stick time on one.

Was your Dad on a P-61?

B-24, Snoopers they were called, 868th.  They flew mostly night missions.


Snoopers, WW2 B24 Low Level Bombers in the Pacific (anthonybuccino.com)




Interestingly, my Dad could "slave" his radar to the bomb drop and they would drop automatically on preset intervals.  They would try and line up with an enemy ship and fly over at 500 feet and drop 3 500 pounders in sequence.  When they first started, the Japanese would stay dark thinking they could not be seen, but that changed.

I'd probably do the quail.  I almost always go with wild game when it's available on a menu.

I figure the wife will do Chowdah and I can get a taste.

Some people really get overly freaked out and excited about fast food burger joints. Whataburger.  In n Out.  Some people even really love White Castle.

I'm not really like that.  It's just fast food.  But Whataburger is pretty good, for a fast food burger.

Not cheap at all, though.