I am new to the game and I struggle against P38s. I know they are much faster than most planes, but when I fight them they somehow outturn me. I once fought a br 3.3 P38 in the BF109 f2 and he managed to outturn me in a horizontal loop. What am I doing wrong?
1 Like
They got a pretty abysmal roll rate, so that’s something you can exploit. Rudder helps improve their roll rate, but the 109 can easily keep and exceed P38s in that regard. You can abuse this by changing the direction of your turn at opportune moments using some sort of scissors (not rolling! Rolling scissors ironically favour the P38.) and their turn will lag behind you.
Furthermore, they’re worse at energy generation than 109s usually, so might struggle to follow you in the vertical with a Bf109F4 but be careful - twin-engines with contra-rotating props give them pretty good low-speed stability and they stall pretty gracefully.
The rudder feels pretty weak in the P-38 at low speeds (150-200 km/h) when I fly it compared to the 109. At higher speeds though, the rudders are quite capable.
As for how it could out-turn you: Flaps. P-38 with flaps is a monster.
Finally, at high speeds they suffer pretty badly with controls locking up and even compression on the elevator until later models with dive flaps (represented as airbrake in Warthunder) and hydraulic boosters.
**Most of my experiences are with Full-Real Controls, some differences due to instructor may change things.
IdahoBookworm flies the P-38 at a pretty high level, watching his matches and studying what he does can help with approximating what the P-38 struggles with dealing. TrainingDays also has some breakdown videos.
6 Likes
As someone who flies the P-38 on occasion in ARB with mouse and keyboard, here are some observations:
The P-38 handles like a pig. Many U.S. props have tragically bad high speed handling, and the P-38 belongs in this category. Even using the keyboard to roll and pitch the Lightning, it feels like an absolute pig. That’s partly compression at high speed, and partly because the air frame itself is clumsy.
Where the P-38 is dangerous is when it has a significant energy advantage AND is within its acceptable handling window. When it can pop the flaps and comfortably pull into a shot against a slow or slow-ish opponent, it’s golden. The bean of death coming out of the nose does the job very nicely.
Where the P-38 is going to struggle is in a high speed fight -OR- when the fight gets slow enough that energy generation and low speed maneuverability do not favor it. Basically, when you get to that speed when you’ve got to pull the flaps in because either you need speed or because you’ll rip them off.
In my low-skill experience, the P-38 crutches HARD on its air spawn. The climb and speed are not otherwise impressive and if it has to fight from a position of disadvantage (i.e. it’s not above you), it’s really, really going to struggle. This is true of most U.S. props. If they cannot enter the fight with an energy advantage, they are in a rough spot. You can either get him fast and equalize the energy while you make him compress or abuse the fact that virtually any 109 runs circles around U…S. props at low speed when energy is equalized.