Warbird Information Exchange

I notice that in the 5 examples on the registry that the props are counterclockwise on some of them and not on others....why?

Of even greater intrest to me is that the left engine is a left hand rotation on one bird, and a right hand rotation on another...

Can anyone enlighten this dumb Texan on why that is?

_________________
One day I looked up and he's pushing 80...
He's got brown tobacco stains all down his chin.
To me he's one of the hero's of this country, so why is he all dressed up like them ole men....

The XP-82, the left engine (V-1650-23) had a gear reduction box to make the left propeller turn opposite the right engine (V-1650-25). Thus, both propellers would turn toward the fuselages. This was opposite of the P-38 design.

The P-82A/F-82E had Allison V-1710-143/145

Regards,
Mike

Actually, the answer is a little simpler than that.

I believe only one or two of the XP's may have been mounted with engines/props that turned in the same direction. Once the Twin Mustang went to production, all engines counter-rotated towards the fuselage on the downstroke (like Mike mentioned, opposite of the P-38 ).

Oh yeah, the simple answer on the survivors is that incorrect props have been mounted. The CAF bird flew with counter-rotating engines, but I'm guessing has a right-hand turning prop on the starboard engine now to make it look more complete as a static. Again, other than experimenting with XP's in the early stages, all -82's carried CR props.

_________________
It was a good idea, it just didn't work.

Well, I thought they were all counter rotating, the thing that gets me is that there is an example with the props turning AWAY from the fuselage....

46-256

_________________
One day I looked up and he's pushing 80...
He's got brown tobacco stains all down his chin.
To me he's one of the hero's of this country, so why is he all dressed up like them ole men....

I'm guessing that the props were probably removed from -256 during its move to Walt Soplata's place. No E model left the factory with props turning P-38 style.

_________________
It was a good idea, it just didn't work.

IIRC, the prototype (or at least the first one to fly) had the props turning away from the centre, and they couldn't get it off the ground in that configuration; they had to reverse the rotation to get it to aviate.

cheers

greg v.

Not doubting you but have to ask, why would they even want to fly it with the props turning that direction? Did they think they were going to run into the same stability problems that the P-38 had?

To be honest I can't really remember where I read this, I think it may have been an old issue of Wings or something similar, but I don't recall there being anything written about why the NA engineers had the prop rotation set as it was at first, just that it gave them many headaches before they figured out what the problem was.

cheers