"Airacobra? Das war ja kein Jäger!", Opinion on the P-39 Airacobra fighter

Reportedly, Luftwaffe pilot, Hans Ellendt, declared that "the Airacobra was no fighter".

The famous Luftwaffe ace, Günther Rall, told once that the Airacobra was "quite easy to shoot down". "A few hits, and it always went into a flat spin. That was because the center of gravity was in the middle of the aircraft, where the engine was placed."

I am wondering what was the Rumanian fighter pilots' opinion on the Airacobra, as flown by the Soviets. Maybe someone in contact with Messrs. Dobran and Di Cesare (and others) can ask them this interesting question, completed with the question: "which was the most effective fighter airplane type flown by the Soviets?"

Gen. Dénes

Ioan Marinciu,met a few times the P-39.
Once as I belive he said in his interv. "sudden I saw an Aircobra flayin towards me from 12 o'clock,we bouth had a lot of speed and he was in my sight only a fraction of a second.I fired imediatlybouth;cannon and mg's...
I felt a sudden burn acros my left leg....
a 37mm projectil,had passed thru the eangine cover made a scratch to my leg,and went backward into the fuselage.
To my question if the P 39 was hit,IM could not answer.
Dan Stoian met a lot of Aircobras and was not impresed by their perform.
Hladiuk's Savoia was once attaked while out of formation by P 39 -12-15,and was saved by 2 109 from JG 52.

I remember that Dobran after a few mittings whit them maked fun of them, but most of the soviet pilots were rookies.

Depends who's flying that plane...

On the other side, the canon installed co-axial with the propeller was quite dangerous when the airplane got close.
Some Russian pilots recall that when the co-axial canon started to fire, they could literally see the disintegration of the enemy plane.

I don't know how it was in real dog fight, but in Warbirds (2) with all his machineguns and gun... no comparation with Me 109 G6 with 20 m.m. under wings, in fire power and effect on target.
In reallity:
Maybe, a lucky shot whith his big gun ... "one shot one kill". It was a good plane for straffing and counter mecanized and tanks (from back).


Iama

Warbirds as in IL2 FB HL DF server Warbirds ? well, the game is sooo much different from the real thing :] Anyway, let us remember the finnish pilots flying obsolit crappy planes against better soviet planes and still kicking those red butts - the pilot made the difference.P39 had a good engine and good weapons, it might not be so good in a turn fight, but hey... you can't have it all

IL-2 has not much in comun with the real dog fights.
A year ago I asked Mariciu(who was a good pilot) to fly the simulator,and couldn't....

Marinciu is over 80 and probably can't properly operate a computer (I know a denstist half his age that is in the same situation ). It is hard for such a person to learn the necessary keys to operate the simulator properly from the first time.

The Dentist you are talking about didn't had then a proper joystick.Now he has.
Marinciu said that the comands are 100 time softer.and many many others.

well, have any of you flown/piloted a small plane in real life ? if you did you know that manouvrability has a new meaning as opposed to IL2 the game... IL2 is kind of arcadish when it comes to simulating a real aerial fight you have non-limited visibility (above a certain distance clouds are not shown and you can see contacts), you can pull all negative and pozitive g's in the world and still have the bugger in your 6 (you are just sitting infront your putter and not feel a damn thing as oposed to real pilots), also manouvrability was not quantified on how tight you can make a turn and how long you may keep the stick pressed into your stomac without stalling... ww2 best fighters were those who had the best power/acc/climb ratio/dive speed/weapons (example: the Stang, the Spit, the Wurger, the Me262 ! ! ! remember Me262 sucks at turn fight - it was the ul;timate fighter because of its engines, speed and firepower !).

So... was P39 a good fighter ? depends who was behind the stick, a good pilot made fierce weapon out of a crappy plane (as I said before look at finnish pilots, hell look even at romanian pilots flying IAR80/81 in '44 against P38).

A russian coleague, who is very much interested in planes told me what the Russian aces said about the Aircobra. They liked flying it, but it was easy to shoot down & could not take many hits, becasue the engine was mounted on the back-behind the pilot!! - unlike most planes!
Other things I know were that it stalled very easily at low level, when truning, or went into a spit that you could not recover from.
It was heavily armed however. Also it was the most significant and most successfull plane that was delivered to the Soviet Union. Hurricanes, P-40, P-47, Spitfires...were less successfull then this plane.

from what I hear, 18,000 planes were delivered to the Soviet Union during world war II. That figure includes bombers too.
I read that some P-39 were flown by American pilots over the polar circle, - to Russia, and that many crashed there.. the arctic and surroundings being littered with P-39 wrecks.


This post has been edited by Der Maresal on September 28, 2004 04:29 pm

Anyone heard of a Russian Aircobra Ace called Babak.. "Ivan Babak" ?
He flew around Mariupol, and may have clashes with ARR planes. He belonged to a Guards regiment, - 100GiAP, had 37 kills.

*


and this is a better picture of the plane he flew,.. the exact model.


This post has been edited by Der Maresal on September 28, 2004 05:03 pm

Great Source of Info

Leading Soviet Airacobra Aces
Pilot | Victories | P-39 Victories | Regiment

-Aleksandr I. Pokryshkin 59| 48| 9 GFD
-Nikolay Gulaev 57| 41| 129 GFR
-Grigori A. Rechkalov 56| 50| 16 GFR
-Dimitriy B. Glinka 50| 41| 100 GFR
-Vladimir I. Bobrov 43| * |104 GFR
-Aleksey Smirnov 34| 30| 153 FR
-Ivan I. Babak 33| 32| 16 GFR
-Mikhail S. Komelkov 32| 32| 104 GFR
-A. Klubov 31| 27| 16 GFR
-Boris B. Glinka 31| 31| 16 GFR
-A. Fedorov 24| * |16 GFR
-V. Semenishin 23| * |104 GFR
-K. Sukhov 22| * |16 GFR
-P. Eremin 22| * 16 GFR
-P. Kryukov 22| * |16 GFR
-N. Chistov 19| * |16 GFR

This post has been edited by Der Maresal on September 28, 2004 04:50 pm

AFAIK, the Airacobra's Browning M4 37mm cannon with a low muzzle velocity and a limited ammunition capacity was not an effective air-to-air weapon. Originally, it was designed to destroy bombers from a distance, but its performance was not sufficient for the task.
Though it took only one direct hit to bring down a smaller enemy airplane, the slow rate of fire and drooping trajectory made that one hit improbable.

Gen. Dénes