Quote:
Originally Posted by copeab
The engine was behind the pilot, placing a shaft under the pilot's legs up to the prop. Worth adding that some PT boats began fitting the 37mm cannon from wrecked P-39's (including the built-in 30 round magazine) as a deck gun.
Either the P-38 prototype or first model had a 37mm rather than 20mm nose gun.
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The earliest P-38 (maybe only the XP-38) had a 37mm nose gun, I'm pretty sure all production models moved to the 20mm gun. It was designed as a high-altitude bomber-interceptor, the main reason it had turbosupercharger and the P-39 and P-40 did not.
The P-39 was designed and built with the 37mm gun, for ground support, but not necessarily tank-busting, in mind. It and the P-40 had heavy armament for attack missions.
One variant had a 20mm instead, for shipment to the British. Several of these were sidetracked to the South Pacific instead (39th Fighter Squadron, Guadalcanal, IIRC), where they couldn't really fly at high altitude (still had British oxygen equipment, and no turbosupercharger). This was the P-400 ("it's a P-40 with a Zero on its tail!"). The Marines liked them for ground support.
There were other P-39 squadrons in New Guinea, Alaska and other Pacific islands, and a few groups in the Mediterranean. Once the USAAF started getting P-47s in bulk, most of the P-39 production went to the French and Soviets. The Soviets loved them-- they had radios! Lots of folks have read that the Soviets used them for CAS, but in Soviet terminology, "close air support" meant stooging over the battlefield, looking for German ground-attack planes to shoot down.
There was a really cool book by a P-39 pilot,
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9...t_s_Love_Story. The vibrations of the gun firing through the drive shaft were one of his favorite sensations.
I'm still convinced there was a WW1 German cannon-armed plane, but I have not been able to track it down.