Give me your P-38J tips!

[Lufberyjaa]

I'm a Flying Circus flying coming into WWII combat for the first time with Battle of Bodenplatte.

I'm really enjoying the P-38, but I'm also getting my butt kicked in one on one or four on four duels. Part of the issue is that my gunnery isn't very good (see my previous thread), but it would also be great to get everyone's tips on the best way to fight with the P-38. So what do you do that works really well? What should I avoid? 

Thanks!

[BlitzPig_EL]

I only use the P38 for ground attack missions, which it excels at.  It's worthless against any of the German fighters in any kind of dogfight situation, unless you have numeric superiority.  On even terms you are dead, every time.  If you want to go toe to toe with a Luftwaffe fighter, grab a Spitfire or a Mustang.

[Rocket_Knut]

Simple:

1. give it enough lead
2. pull the trigger
3. turn your favourite music track back on
4. change underwear

Video or it didn´t happen? Here you are:

The music track:

 

[Lufberyjaa]

Nice video and nice fight! 

[jokash]

You got really lucky...he went wide turn two times...nevertheless kill is kill 

[Rocket_Knut]

Lucky? Understatement of the month. Only thing beating my level of incompetence was his of bad luck. 

Thank you for putting it rather nicely though. 🙂

[AndreiTomescu]

16 hours ago, Lufberyjaa said:

the best way to fight with the P-38

superior dive. that's your main advantage. to engage a 109/190 successfully you need height  advantage, dive mad, shoot with minimal turn, and climb back. some of the best are good in turning with a P-38, i'm not. also at great heights  you have engine power advantage, with turbo superchargers and 2 engines.

also high speed. Slow and low it's not the way to go.

In one fatal encounter in 10.06.1944, a large formation of P-38s (approx 75 aircrafts) were coming in fast and low, at dawn, unexpected, to perform an air strike on a romanian airfield and oilfields, Ploiesti county, home to some "mighty" IARs of the 1st fighting squadron. some of the P-38s that were  aiming the airfield were bounced (by chance) by the IARs that were gaining altitude to intercept the supposedly high altitude bomber formation.  (The IAR was slow, slow, also slow to climb). The fight took place at approx 200 m height in a 2sq km box. about 9+ P-38 were shot down in a matter of minutes by the IARs (what was the chases ? those were hugely inferior but very determined) and the AAA that shoot everybody, without discrimination. 3 IARs were lost, 2 that collided with each other and one by own AAA.

So the vastly superior in any way (to IAR) P-38s were decimated because they were caught low and after the initial boom&zoom caught in a turning fight.

[easterling77]

my humble two cents:

 

You are a very big target - so no knife fights! Quick attacks and then get out!

Using the climbrate when you got energy - never get slow or on low energy or you are doomed.

 

@Rocket_Knut in mother tongue: Bei "Deine Mudda" hab ich fast den Kaffe in den Bildschitm gespuckt🤣

Awesome video

[PROXIMVS]

22 hours ago, Lufberyjaa said:

I'm a Flying Circus flying coming into WWII combat for the first time with Battle of Bodenplatte.

I'm really enjoying the P-38, but I'm also getting my butt kicked in one on one or four on four duels. Part of the issue is that my gunnery isn't very good (see my previous thread), but it would also be great to get everyone's tips on the best way to fight with the P-38. So what do you do that works really well? What should I avoid? 

Thanks!

P-38's turn good.  The problem is: getting them into the turn.  Their roll rate is too slow, so you have to be thinking ahead of the curve.

[PROXIMVS]

5 hours ago, AndreiTomescu said:

superior dive. that's your main advantage. to engage a 109/190 successfully you need height  advantage, dive mad, shoot with minimal turn, and climb back. some of the best are good in turning with a P-38, i'm not. also at great heights  you have engine power advantage, with turbo superchargers and 2 engines.

also high speed. Slow and low it's not the way to go.

In one fatal encounter in 10.06.1944, a large formation of P-38s (approx 75 aircrafts) were coming in fast and low, at dawn, unexpected, to perform an air strike on a romanian airfield and oilfields, Ploiesti county, home to some "mighty" IARs of the 1st fighting squadron. some of the P-38s that were  aiming the airfield were bounced (by chance) by the IARs that were gaining altitude to intercept the supposedly high altitude bomber formation.  (The IAR was slow, slow, also slow to climb). The fight took place at approx 200 m height in a 2sq km box. about 9+ P-38 were shot down in a matter of minutes by the IARs (what was the chases ? those were hugely inferior but very determined) and the AAA that shoot everybody, without discrimination. 3 IARs were lost, 2 that collided with each other and one by own AAA.

So the vastly superior in any way (to IAR) P-38s were decimated because they were caught low and after the initial boom&zoom caught in a turning fight.

You have to be very careful with a P-38 in a dive: if you hit too high a speed you will encounter the compressibility issue and find yourself unable to recover from the dive.

In the real world this was an issue at higher altitudes, below 10,000' not so much.  One P-38 pilot described attempting to dive to the rescue of another US aircraft, hitting too high a speed during the dive, suffering compressibility and finding himself unable to pull out of the dive as his Lightning went screaming down toward mother earth.  He described parts of his cockpit getting ripped off.  However, once he passed 10,000' he was able to pull his aircraft out of the dive in the thicker air.

In the original version of the game if you encountered the compressibility issue there was no recovering.  I am not sure about how that works in this version yet.

That speed was a bit over 400 MPH, maybe as low as 408 but I am not sure if I am remembering that quite correctly.

[PROXIMVS]

Fact is the two highest scoring US pilots of WW II were Richard Bong and Thomas McGuire.

They both flew P-38's.

[Panthercules]

2 hours ago, PROXIMVS said:

Fact is the two highest scoring US pilots of WW II were Richard Bong and Thomas McGuire.

They both flew P-38's.

PTO - 1943 onward,  Still amazing achievements, but not generally comparable to flying against ETO opposition aircraft/pilots.

[BlitzPig_EL]

Yup, they started their streaks right about the time that Imperial Japan was starting to run out of their most experienced pilots.

Not to mention that the IJN in particular never had a state of the art fighter design beyond the A6M3, and that the Army could never keep their more modern fighter types serviced in the field for any length of time.

Edited May 17 by BlitzPig_EL
spelling correction

[MajorMagee]

One factor, often overlooked, is that the Japanese Pilot Training System lacked the ability to scale up its capacity during wartime while the US was doing it at an industrial scale.

[BlitzPig_EL]

Indeed, they washed out pilot candidates to crew positions that would have been aces in any other air force.