Posted on 09/25/2020 9:01:24 AM PDT by C19fan
The remains of a Second World War-era Bell P-39 Airacobra fighter aircraft have been pulled from the Black Sea.
The plane was hauled from the water in the Kalamita Bay, near the village of Novofyodorovka, Crimea, as part of a joint expedition of the Russian Geographical Society and the Russian Defence Ministry.
The aircraft had entered service with the Black Sea Fleet in 1943 but was forced to make a water landing just one year later due to a technical malfunction during a training flight.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
It was a real piece of crap that saw high attrition rates in every theater employed by the USAF. Just as well that the Russians got some use out of it. Better than nothing, for sure.
Looks like it did when it rolled off the factory floor.
I think that an important part of Soviet strategy was to just put out a lot of targets and try to overwhelm the Nazis or make them run out of ammunition.
Supposedly they had been designed with the turbocharged version of the Allison engine in mind, and performed very well when they had it.
P-39 had a cannon which fired through propeller. Russians liked it in an anti-tank role.
Well when you’re lagging technologically (thanks to being a new industrial nation AND having killed off most of your talented people), and “bodies” are literally all you’ve got....
PT boat crews in the Solomons liked to re-purpose those 37mm cannons as additional firepower. They were great against Japanese supply barges and other small craft.
Not really, in Russian service it was extremely successful. You have an uninformed opinion. Five of the 10 highest scoring Soviet aces logged the majority of their kills in P-39s. Grigoriy Rechkalov scored 44 victories in Airacobras. Pokryshkin scored 47 of his 59 victories in P-39s, making him the highest scoring P-39 fighter pilot of any nation, and the highest scoring Allied fighter pilot using an American fighter.
The high attrition rates in USAF were due to early war poor tactics, meeting Zeros in maneuvering dogfights that no other fighter on earth could turn with, and in Europe we operated at high altitudes that it could not function at.
A graceful airplane which unfortunately did not perform particularly well.
It was a plane constructed around a cannon.
There’s a great movie out called, I think, Mr. Jones.
It’s about an English reporter.
He goes to the Soviet Union in the 1930s because the Soviet Union is building like crazy while the rest of the world is dormant from The Depression.
He finds that Stalin is starving the Ukrainians so that he can sell their grain for cash and then use the money to build.
The Holodomor (sp?).
The Soviet Union was turning out massive amounts of armaments.
“The plane was powered by an Allison engine without a turbo-supercharger “
Single-speed supercharger
The sleek design made the P-39 as fast or faster than it’s contemporary early war fighters, so long as the altitude was 5000 feet or less. The 37mm cannon was huge for the time and was useful in ground attack. They held their own when used with the limitations in mind.
During WWII, my dad was the chief engineering officer for a squadron of P-39’s in a group assigned to protect the Panama Canal. Later the group was given P-51’s and sent to India/Burma. The difference was night and day. The pilots thought they’s gone to heaven.
(Interestingly, before assigned the P-51’s, the group had spent about 3 months learning all about flying and maintaining the Bell P-59 Aircomet jet. The jet program had continuing problems and the P-51’s were better anyway.)
Say, that sounds like the A-10 Thunderbolt!
[It was a plane constructed around a cannon.]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brewster_F2A_Buffalo#Finland
Of course, on the Russian front, P-39’s faced off German Bf-109’s and FW-190’s (as well as ME-210’s and assorted slower craft). One huge variable was the quality of the pilots. German squadrons became filled with low-time pilots as the war progressed. The early aces that survived remained deadly opponents until the bitter end.
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