P-40B Tomahawk | Wookiee's Hanger (Big Radials)

[leprechaunlive 1,852]

i think its the PNG theatre and that north american ferry route that has the most challenges and scenic terrains. thanks guys, that helped a lot!

[Chock 17,769]

Some more fun stuff about the P-40 and related aeroplanes...

If you are anxious to (sort of) have a P-40 in MSFS whilst you await the arrival of this one, and if you also like big radials, you might like to know that you can successfully port the FSX/P3D Vertigo Studios Curtiss P-36/Hawk 75 into MSFS and it works well, with all the dials and stuff in the VC working. Here it is in MSFS:

You can see how similar the P-36 looks to a P-40 if you disregard the radial engine, which is hardly surprising because the development process for the P-40 was simply to take a production Curtiss P-36, remove its P&W R1830 Twin Wasp engine, then replace it with an Allison V-1710, and that was about it.

The coolant radiator and air scoop needed for the newer liquid-cooled engine was initially located under the belly - sort of similar to the air scoop on a P-51 - but wind tunnel tests determined that it was better to move it forward, so it ended under the chin with the oil cooler placed in there too. Apart from a few changes to the landing gear fairings and a tweak to the exhaust manifolds to add a little bit of thrust, this first P-40 was essentially just a P-36 with a different engine. It was really only the more streamlined nose which gave it a better turn of speed because the R-1830 was capable of putting out a lot of power too. Later, the P-40 design prototypes got more guns in the wings, but that was about it design-wise for the early P-40 variants. 

The P-40 got a production contract in spite of its cobbled-together origins because the US wanted a back up fighter plane and at the time they considered its role as a low altitude fighter bomber more important, so it was largely the fact that it was ready to go which led to it being produced, and being a back up type and not thought of as critical for equipping its own forces, it was available for export to nations which were already involved in WW2 prior to US involvement, including the RAF in Britain, and what would end up being the AVG in China, where the US was effectively a proxy combatant prior to its actual involvement.

The P-36 did see combat in WW2 and unlike most types, it fought on both sides. Well over a thousand of them were produced by Curtiss and they were exported to lots of countries, notably to France, where they saw combat in the Battle of France in 39-40 although superior German air combat tactics learned in the Spanish Civil War meant these French Hawk 75Cs (the export designation for the P-36) didn't fare too well. Quite a lot of these French Curtiss aeroplanes were captured by Germany during their rapid advances, and with no use for them, they sold about 40 to Finland, who used them to fight against the Russians.

With the fall of France, additional Hawk 75Cs which had been due for delivery to France were then diverted to Britain, which at that time, prior to the Nuffield Organisation sorting out Spitfire production to speed it up by creating a massive shadow factory at Castle Bromwich, was happy to take any combat aeroplanes it could get and in fact asked North American to make additional P-40s for them as well, however, North American instead suggested they make something of their own design, which ended up being the A36 Apache, which of course minus the dive brakes, was the P-51 Mustang.

After the Battle of Britain, as the European weather improved in mid-1941, the British began mounting daylight fighter sweeps over France to harass the occupying German forces, and it was at this point they began encountering a German fighter aeroplane with a radial engine. Pilots were reporting that it was at least the equal of, and possibly superior to, the early Spitfire Mark Vs they were flying at that time. British Intelligence checked these pilot reports and concluded that these were captured French Hawk 75Cs, in spite of the fact that their own Hawk 75Cs which they had acquired as a result of taking over French orders, had been deemed unsuitable for use in the European theatre. These had been sent to the Pacific theatre to fight in Burma.

Of course the German aeroplanes which those Spitfires were encountering weren't captured ex-French Air Force Hawks in Luftwaffe use, they were the new Focke-Wulf 190A, which had been kept a closely-guarded secret in Germany and so came as a total surprise to Britain. The arrival of the Mark IX Spitfire in early 1942 helped to redress that balance against the mystery fighter, and shortly after this, a German pilot mistook the Bristol Channel for the English Channel and thinking he was over France landed a brand new Focke Wulf 190 at an RAF airfield completely intact.

Hard as it is to believe, the radial engine on the Focke-Wulf 190 led to fears of another potential case of mistaken identity possibly causing friendly fire problems in the European theatre, when the US forces in Europe began operating the P-47 Thunderbolt on escort missions over France and Germany. As a result of this, the first P-47s in theatre wore prominent white bands around their nose cowlings and on their wingtips to help to avoid confusion, although looking at it now, it's hard to imagine how a P-47 could be mistaken for a Fw-190, even in the heat of combat.

 

Edited February 2, 2021 by Chock

[Chock 17,769]

If you can stifle expecting the instructor to say 'Joey, do you like movies about Gladiators?', then this WW2 training film for the P40 is well worth a look, especially since it is in colour:

 

Edited February 2, 2021 by Chock

[mtn_fly_co 0]

On 1/29/2021 at 2:08 AM, Glenn Fitzpatrick said:

So yes lots of things had bigger radials than a B17  .

Sorry dude, I wasn't really trying to quote facts and I guess that I was just trying to be funny. I have just always loved that airplane since forever and it is a monster.

[Chock 17,769]

Not a classic P-40B of the kind the AVG flew in China as the famous Flying Tigers, and which this newly-announced version for MSFS will depict, but for those of you who have the Flight Replicas later P-40N variant, you might like to know that it too ports over to MSFS successfully:

And for those of you who can't get enough of big radials, you'll be pleased to know that the Aeroplane Heaven Boeing B-17F/G also ports over to MSFS with no problems:

As with the Vertigo Studios P-36, these two also display the virtual cockpit with the gauges working okay, so as long as you are prepared to use keyboard shortcuts for the controls instead of clicking on them in the VC, you can fly all of these in MSFS no problem.

It'll still be better to have a native MSFS P-40B of course, since it is the real classic P-40 even though it wasn't the most numerous variant built, so I'm certainly looking forward to that one showing up.

In the interim, if WW2-era stuff is your thing, Flight Replicas have reported, and I can confirm this is the case, that pretty much all of their stuff will port over to MSFS and work okay, and they have reported that they will be producing stuff for MSFS natively, so if you have their Handley Page Halifax, or any of the numerous DC-4/6 variants, or their Me-262s, Ha-1112/bf109s, these all work in MSFS.

For those of you who like the stuff which German developer Classics Hangar makes, including their Fw-190, Ta-152 and Messerschmitt bf-108, this developer has commenced work on getting these into MSFS and has shown some pics of one of their late variant Fw-190/Ta-152s in the sim recently.

Edited February 3, 2021 by Chock

[HighBypass 2,339]

A pity that the M501/503 never flew - any aeroplane having those things as powerplants would have no doubt been impressive.

As an aside those 42 cylinder engines make tractors go quite well, especially if one uses methanol as a fuel.. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPR8zBSNOgE

 

[karlow17 15]

16 hours ago, Chock said:

Not a classic P-40B of the kind the AVG flew in China as the famous Flying Tigers, and which this newly-announced version for MSFS will depict, but for those of you who have the Flight Replicas later P-40N variant, you might like to know that it too ports over to MSFS successfully:

And for those of you who can't get enough of big radials, you'll be pleased to know that the Aeroplane Heaven Boeing B-17F/G also ports over to MSFS with no problems:

As with the Vertigo Studios P-36, these two also display the virtual cockpit with the gauges working okay, so as long as you are prepared to use keyboard shortcuts for the controls instead of clicking on them in the VC, you can fly all of these in MSFS no problem.

It'll still be better to have a native MSFS P-40B of course, since it is the real classic P-40 even though it wasn't the most numerous variant built, so I'm certainly looking forward to that one showing up.

In the interim, if WW2-era stuff is your thing, Flight Replicas have reported, and I can confirm this is the case, that pretty much all of their stuff will port over to MSFS and work okay, and they have reported that they will be producing stuff for MSFS natively, so if you have their Handley Page Halifax, or any of the numerous DC-4/6 variants, or their Me-262s, Ha-1112/bf109s, these all work in MSFS.

For those of you who like the stuff which German developer Classics Hangar makes, including their Fw-190, Ta-152 and Messerschmitt bf-108, this developer has commenced work on getting these into MSFS and has shown some pics of one of their late variant Fw-190/Ta-152s in the sim recently.

Do the switches work in the VC of the B-17?

[Chock 17,769]

4 hours ago, karlow17 said:

Do the switches work in the VC of the B-17?

The switches do move if you use shortcuts for the actions, but they are not actually clickable unfortunately, at least not when I import them, so it means that you do have to assign controller buttons or keys to a lot of stuff in order to use it. But it does mean I got this cool screenie:

 

Edited February 4, 2021 by Chock

[Glenn Fitzpatrick 3,798]

4 hours ago, HighBypass said:

A pity that the M501/503 never flew - any aeroplane having those things as powerplants would have no doubt been impressive.

As an aside those 42 cylinder engines make tractors go quite well, especially if one uses methanol as a fuel.. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPR8zBSNOgE

 

 

yeah ... not at the same "you gotta be s### me" level of the nuclear powered Lockheed CL-1201 (the real world attempt to build what was basically a Marvel helicarrier) but nevertheless very impressive.  😄

 

 

 

Edited February 4, 2021 by Glenn Fitzpatrick

[Chock 17,769]

Currently on sale for £2.99 on Steam (for I think another 24 hours or so), is the P-40E-1 for IL-2 Sturmovik: Battle of Stalingrad, which is itself on sale for £5.99 at the moment. Since this add-on P40 is normally £15 and the base sim is normally £39, this is your opportunity to get a P40 you can fly in a combat sim, as well as the sim too with many other aeroplanes, for less than a tenner. i.e. this thing:

Anyway it's quite nice if you fancy a P40 in a combat flight sim and of course it lets you shoot stuff down in a campaign as well as online against other people, although you'll have to be a pretty good sim combat pilot to do well with it, since you'll be up against the Messerschmitt bf109F in a Russian Front campaign. But of course with it having six .50s in the wings, it does pack a punch and it can turn with the 109 if you do lag pursuits and throw in a few high/low yo-yos. This E variant has bomb and rocket shackles too, so it is a decent ground attack plane which can mix it with the fighters after it has shed its load and so long as you know how to manage the engine properly and don't over-boost it. And it is a great-looking model, as you can see here:

In case you don't know the specific variant, the P-40E-1 (aka the Tomahawk 1A to the RAF) was what many people would probably regard as the classic variant of the P-40, it being the one which US Army pilots first took into combat when they began taking over from the AVG in the CBI theatre in 1942 (the AVG had used the B and C variants). The D variant was more of a transitional version of which only fifty were made so it's really this E model which followed the B and C.

The E also saw the brunt of combat in North Africa with various Commonwealth and RAF forces in 1942, as well as having the dubious honour of being the version which the Japanese Army operated for a short period in 1943 after they managed to capture a few intact in Burma, although in doing that, they apparently suffered a few friendly fire incidents.

Edited February 4, 2021 by Chock

[Fielder 3,642]

CHOCK, I own the flight replicas P-40N for FSX.

How would I port it in MSFS, if you could point me in the right direction to learn how to do that thanks.

[Chock 17,769]

3 hours ago, Fielder said:

CHOCK, I own the flight replicas P-40N for FSX.

How would I port it in MSFS, if you could point me in the right direction to learn how to do that thanks.

Pretty simple really, just a few mouse clicks is all you do. So...

If you go here and download MSFS Legacy Importer, then install that, you're all set. Think you need an account there to download it, but that's free and only takes a second or so to create. All you have to do is fire that importer up. Click on the left hand panel of the main interface click point it to your P-40 folder in FSX  or P3D (the main one in the sim objects>airplanes folder). Next, click in the right hand panel and point it at your MSFS Community folder. Click Import and bob's yer uncle.

It should then do it all for you. For some aeroplanes which you import with this tool, you might have to do a bit more by clicking on the import button, to bring up the advanced functions, where you can tweak config files, edit textures and such, but this is fairly self explanatory if you take a look at the interface and only really requires you to tick a few options boxes.

Note that for anything you import, you will need to use keyboard shortcuts or assigned controller button presses to operate stuff, such as F7 and F6 for the flaps etc, as this importer does not convert VC click spots, but you will find that it does all work in MSFS and that the control animations do function when they are triggered by those key presses or controller buttons, so just make sure you have some keys set up for increasing and decreasing mixture, changing prop RPMs, opening cowling flaps and all that stuff.

Edited February 4, 2021 by Chock

[leprechaunlive 1,852]

For peolple that were wondering, we managed to implement some complex behaviours into our P-40, namely the flaps and gears procedures. 

[jmig 100]

On 1/25/2021 at 7:42 AM, Chock said:

Yup, pretty much true, even the humble Cessna 172 is also the T-41 Mescalero.

Mescalero? I didn't know that was its name. I flew it early on during USAF pilot training, but we only knew it as the T-41. Many a pilot's dream died in that airplane under the eyes and vocal cords of the ex-WWII civilian IPs. I remember being yelled at for being 15 feet off my assigned altitude. You did learn to fly the assigned altitude and heading.

[Chock 17,769]

Just now, jmig said:

Mescalero? I didn't know that was its name. I flew it early on during USAF pilot training, but we only knew it as the T-41. Many a pilot's dream died in that airplane under the eyes and vocal cords of the ex-WWII civilian IPs. I remember being yelled at for being 15 feet off my assigned altitude. You did learn to fly the assigned altitude and heading.

Aah, military instructors yelling at you. Been there done that. My favourite personal recollection whilst over Leicester on a check ride, a booming voice from behind: 'Look where you're going before you turn! Good God man! There might be another pilot out there who's as stupid as you!'

Not the kind of cockpit patter snowflakes would like and probably disapproved of these days, but it does ensure you don't make the mistake again lol.