Chuck Yeager loved the plane but said it would be hell to try to bail out of.

The plane instead of opening from too it has doors on both sides. Plus the aircobras were one of the US weird ideas that worked

Oh wow. My uncle Henry used to fly P-39s with the 8th Air Force during WWII. He mentioned it was kind of unsettling for the pilots to know there was a drive shat spinning away at high speed between their legs, but the Russians liked the aircraft better. He also preferred his P-47 "Jug" as well as the P-51.

great picture...

V.

Fine looking plane. My uncle was air force, and showed me lots of nice planes when I was younger. Father was navy, and grandfather was Army in Italy during WWII.

You guys who had fathers and GF's you speak of should be proud of them and follow in their steps.

Well sadly at the time they didn't allow women. But I do support our military highly.

*rkk tkks at a cobra*

A helluva neat bird.

Don't give me a P-39
With the engine that's mounted behind.
She'll tumble and spin
and auger you in,
Don't give me a P-39.

But to be fair:

Don't give me a P-38
The props they counter-rotate
They're shattered and smitten
From Burma to Britain
Don't give me a P-38.

Don't give me a Peter-Four-Oh
She's a hell of an airplane, I know,
She's a ground looping bastard,
You're sure to get plastered,
Don't give me a Peter-Four-Oh.

... and so on, probably for any airplane that ever flew. :)

Just give me Operations,
Way out on some lonely atoll.
For I am too young to die,
I just want to grow old.

Don't give me an old Thunderbolt.
It gave many a pilot a jolt.
It looks like a jug and flies like a tug,
Don't give me an old Thunderbolt.

Go on... I'm listen 'n ! I love it!

Here is one version

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFdxwZR3T1A

There are a few other verses, for later aircraft, but the latest only goes up to the F4.Phantom.

Don't give me an F-35
You're unlikely to come back alive.
Generals wishin' it could fly a mission.
Don't give me an F-35.

Don't give me an F-22
Assembled from carbon and glue.
A plane full of tricks, that flies like a brick
Don't give me an F-22

BWAH-HAW-HAW! Excellent additions to a classic song...

I might try a C-47
Her designer is sure to reach Heaven.
She'll groan through the air
But by damn you'll get there,
I might try a C-47.

Don't give me an old PBY,
A barn door that drifts through the sky
She's shot up and beaten
By all that she's meetin'
Don't give me an old PBY.

Don't give me a one-seventeen
You hope that you'll never be seen
Because if you're hit
She'll just shatter, that's it,
Don't give me a one-seventeen.

Don't give me a Fairchild A-10
You may get there, but who can say when?
When you touch off that Gatling
Your skull will be rattling
Don't give me a Fairchild A-10.

Don't give me a B-52
With the airframe that's older than you
She's as big as the sky
They can't miss, so you'll die
Don't give me a B-52.

Don't give me an Airbus at all,
The computer takes over, you stall
Get some fool software glitch
And you spin in or ditch,
Don't give me an Airbus at all.

Send those to Oscar Brand. He might just record 'em!

Don't give me a P-51.
It was all right for fighting the Hun,
If the Jap you should try,
You'll run out of sky.
Don't give me a P-51.

My Dad did 17 years in the Navy as a Seabee and served just after WWII but was in during Korea. My uncle did 17 years in the Air Forcee and was a SAC navigator and radar specialist. My grandfather was in WWI as an artilleryman. His hearing was terrible.

Haw! My granddad was an artilleryman during The Great War, too. Dad (who served in the 84th Infantry Division in WWII) remembers him being deaf as a post when Dad was a toddler; he found out why in 1944.

As bad as the P-39 was supposed to be, there were built from models A through Q. Of nearly 10,000 built, few survive today.

From what I read, their biggest problems were no altitude performance and short range. And no way to add more fuel tanks because the center of gravity area of the fuselage was full of engine. But that didn't matter so much on the Eastern Front, and the Russians loved 'em.

The prototype showed plenty of promise until the tubro-supercharger was removed and military equipment was added. The P-63 Kingcobra corrected these issues and had extra fuel capacity, but was deliberately limited so as not to compete with the P-51.

P-38 + 1 = an odd number. I remember this bird because when I worked in the Hospital (40 years ago) one of my patients had flown one during The Big One. He said the rest of the guys in the Squadron hated it, but he was happy just to have his own plane and, "It always treated me nice." I'd forgotten about that for years!