Bell P-400 Airacobra - This Ones Got Some Teeth

Chris N, thanks for the kind words. The pic of your build didn't post, at least all I see is the dreaded red X. Check out the testing forum for instructions on posting pics.

djmodels1999, thanks for the kind words. Glad you liked it.

Minor correction on the P-400 history. The aircrafts were supercharged, just not turbo-supercharged or turbocharged.

The Army Air Force ordered the turbocharger removed from the P-39. One of the reasons was that the NACA was obsessed with streamlining and the turbocharger installation had bulges that caused extra drag. Without the turbocharger the P-39 lost a lot of performance. On the other hand there were a lot of teething problems with the turbocharger and Allison engine which was eventually solved and used to great success on the P-38. The British got rid of them not specifically because of the lack of turbocharger, but rather the lack of overall performance which indirectly was the result of not having the turbocharger. The Brits also rejected the P-40 for Northwest European operations due to lack of altitude performance but kepted them for use in the Western Desert.

hungfarlow, we may be discussing semantics here, but the AC were originally slated to recieve the turbo-supercharger and when the USAAC decided not to fit the turbo-supercharger, the British rejected them as a direct result of the loss in performance. There was also some politics involved in that the USAAC didn't want to export that technology and the Brits were a little PO'D. I agree I should have used the term turbo-supercharger, but hey, nobody's perfect, not even me.

I did a little more research and it looks like the main cause of the loss of performance that pissed the British off was not due to the lack of turbocharger but rather the increase in weight of the actual aircraft in combat configuration. Even with the turbocharger it still would not have met the promised performance, but then with better high altitude performance it might have met RAF requirements. The low altitude performance was only marginally worse without it, but the climb performance really got hurt with the extra weight. It was analogous to the Curtiss P-46 making performance specification without being fully equiped. The fully equiped P-46 worse performance than a P-40D. Bell gave the British fantastic performance numbers that were based on prototype figures without armaments or armour.

Actually it's not wrong to call a turbocharger a supercharger since a turbocharger is a specific kind of supercharger. The problem is that there were two superchargers, one integral to the engine and the other of course the turbo so it's confusing when one says the supercharger was removed. Functionally it's a two stage system.

And all this time I thought a P-400 was a P-40 with a Zero on it's tail...

Hey Rick forgot to ask you, what where the tones used in your model? do you remember?

thanks in advance
regards
Hector.

Hector, I see the pics have disappeared. The host web site moved them and changed the URL's. The colors used were RAF Dark Earth, Dark Green and Sky. Thanks for your interest.