Richard Bong had a good career in the P-38.

That must have sounded bad ass. I love the sound of a B-17 flying over, and that's just 4 engines, 10 (even at low RPMs) must sound killer.

Can you imagine what it must have sounded like back in the day when 100's of them were in the air at the same time? (prior to the bombs exploding that is...)

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Joe Bob was right. It's both a turbo and a supercharger.

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What did these engines run on "back in the day?"

Not sure about WWII but until the late '90s 115/145 octane Aviation Gasoline was still available and both the Alaska piston freighter operators (DC-6, C-46, C-47) burned that as well as the Reno Air Races. As with gas for cars, aviation gas used to be a lot better.

I was once at an airshow, standing in front of eleven B-17s doing a start run up.
The wind shifted direction, and the sound indescribable. 396 cylinders.

Cool thread. My dad flew p-332’s in advanced training (P-38’s without turbocharges & both engines turning CW), P-61’s in the European theater and bailed out of an F-5 (Photo-Recon version of P-38) over Louisiana after the war. He went to primary pilot training at CalAero, at Chino. It's a small world!

There was an article in Flying a while ago about Lindy and the P-38. The pilots were all using too rich a mixture. Lindy showed them how to operate lean of peak (cylinder head temperature). Aircraft use cylinder head temperature as a substitute for oxygen sensors and other methods of measuring air/fuel mixture. Once you get leaner than stoichiometric the temps go down but efficiency goes up.

thank you for helping me shoot my load for the night......


Trivia.........for extra effort......."giving it the whole nine yards"


So I've been led to believe, the term "Giving it the whole nine yards" as a phrase, was from a wing mounted machine gun in the P-51, Corsair, or P-38 era WWII planes, that had 27 feet of ammo belts. They would shoot it all on target, and you didn't want to come back to base with any ammo left over, hence, "gave it the whole nine yards".

I shot my load..........heck we didn't have laser guided sharks back in those days.