Word: p39
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...vital European theater our newest fighters have not been fully tried up to now. Appraisal of our older fighter types-the Bell P39 and the Curtiss P-40-compels the conclusion that they are not right for operation under today's high-altitude tactics in Britain. Both are outclassed in the high-altitude field by the British Spitfire and the German Messerschmitt 109 and Focke-Wulf 190. But it is one of the paradoxes of aircraft performance that the P39 has proved a splendid weapon on the Russian and Aleutian fronts [where lower altitudes are the rule] and that...
...waiting for a well-founded complaint." Two Army majors sagely told the Society of Automotive Engineers in New York that while "it may be admitted that for altitude work we have not yet been able to match the best fighters of Britain, Germany and Japan," the P-40 and P39 were doing a creditable job "in the lower [altitude] levels." Then they praised the qualities of two new fighting planes (Lockheed P-38, Republic P-47) which have yet to be tested in combat. All this argument did not make U.S. planes any better or worse than they have been...
Grapevine Discipline. The Army is launching a new safety campaign with posters. Some of the posters point out the differences in the characteristics of different planes. "A P39 [Airacobra fighter] will climb like a homesick angel," reads one. "A bt-13 [Vultee trainer] won't." , Officially unmentioned but part & parcel of the safety campaign is a grapevine disciplinary system. The accident-preventers launch a word-of-mouth report that Pilot Joe Doe pulled a pretty dumb one when he groundlooped that P-4O. Presently the gossip reaches Pilot Joe Doe, who feels terrible...
...public heard that the Japanese Zero was a superior plane, then read that the antiquated Curtiss P-40 (Tomahawk) knocked the whey out of it. Reports said the Bell P39 (Airacobra) had too fragile a landing gear for the rough fields of Russia; other reports from the Red Front had Airacobras fighting German planes to a standstill. The later P-40s (Kittyhawks) supposedly couldn't get high enough to fight Messerschmitts, but in Libya the Kittyhawk, with Spitfires, took control of the air and held...
Further specifications, plain to airmen, Greek to civilians: P-40 (Curtiss pursuit), a girl who is neat, streamlined, trim; P-38 (Lockheed's swift, highflying, two-engined interceptor that climbs so fast pilots are apt to get the bends), similar but dangerous for the inexperienced; P39 (Bell's Airacobra pursuit which has several rare features, engine behind the pilot), strange, swift, mysterious; the prefix Z (for obsolete), over age 28; O-47 (North American observation plane), a girl from Dorothy Parker's couplet-wears glasses; B-19 (Douglas' huge bomber), stylish stout...