Just Flight P-38 For FS2004 And FSX

he P-38 is one of the most distinctive fighters of all time and it looked even more radical when the first airframe was rolled out in January 1939. As the onlookers drank in the sight of the new plane, everyone was holding their breath - Lockheed had taken a terrific gamble on the design, having ploughed $6 million of the company's own money into it, without any firm orders. The result was a highly unusual looking twin, double the size of the other fighters of its day, with the pilot sat in a central pod, directly behind four fifties and a 20 mm cannon.

Though it had many teething problems during its operational development, this plane changed the course of the air war, because it was the first fighter with the range to fly to Berlin and back. In fact, fitted with drop tanks, a P-38 could be flown across the Atlantic and that is how many arrived in Britain. A flight of six has recently been discovered snowed over where they ran out of fuel in Greenland and at least one is being restored. Any history teachers reading this might like to follow the link, because it connects to a highly readable lesson plan.

The P-38 offered tremendous range, firepower and rate of climb and it was also very fast at altitude, but if there was a problem with the airframe it was that it lacked performance below 15000 feet, which sowed the seeds of its obsolescence and eventual replacement as an escort by the P-51. However, with tanks fitted, it was capable of carrying over a thousand gallons of fuel, which allowed a range of 450 miles - unheard for a fighter of the time. The first long range bomber escorts began in early 1944, with P-38s providing cover as far as the Romanian oil fields at Ploesti. It very quickly became apparent that although the P-38 could fly a long way, it wasn't ideal as an escort and that mixing it with 109s and FW190s was a poor idea; if they didn't employ "zoom and boom" tactics, early model P-38s were outclassed by German fighters, but later versions were fitted with manoeuvering flaps and were able to outturn their opponents at medium and high altitudes. The biggest weakness of the P-38 ultimately turned out to be the cooling systems of its Allison engines which were unsuitable for use in the European theatre - every plane ended up having its powerplants changed at least once. When you understand that at operational altitude, the temperature was at least 40 below, the scale of this problem becomes apparent, and it was only solved with the debut of the P-38J.

The P-38 was dogged by another problem, which was that in a high speed dive, transonic shock waves could cause control lock and make recovery very difficult - if the pilot didn't do something quick, the dive became more and more vertical and the speed increased until the wings ripped off. This defect made P-38 pilots cautions about following Luftwaffe opponents in a dive, with the result that many German pilots used this tactic to escape. I can imagine the shock when the Luftwaffe encountered the P-38J-25-LO, which had compressibility flaps under the wing for the purpose of preserving elevator control at speed. Thankfully, the designers at Lockhed were persistent, because the P-38 can claim to be one of the outstanding fighters of the war, but it took time and many European P-38 squadrons were converted to the P-51 while the teething problems were being ironed out.

Just Flight's P-38 was developed by Aeroplane Heaven and brings you two different variants, the F and the J, in seventeen different schemes. The pack covers quite a variety of aircraft, some of which were flown by famous pilots and range from photorecon F4s and F5s, through escorts F and Js, to ground attack versions, so there is something for everyone. I reviewed the boxed version, which requires Microsoft XP or Vista; a 1.7 Ghz processor for XP and a 2.5 Ghz processor for FSX; 512 Mb of RAM for XP and a gig for FSX; 2 gigs of RAM and a DVD ROM drive - do note the latter if you are installing the pack on FS2004, because the addon comes on a DVD, not a CD. I did the review using FSX SP2 on a 2.66 Ghz Core2Duo with 4 Gb of RAM, a 768 Mb GeForce 8800 GTX and Windows Vista (pre SP1, for what it is worth).

The addon came in a DVD-style box, containing a single DVD and a 27 page manual, which tells you more or less everything you need to know about installing and using the package. Installation presented no problems, other than choosing which version of Flight Simulator to install the addon in and a choice of language to run the installation. When everything was done, I checked for a new program group, but couldn't find one, so it appears that under FSX at least, an uninstall would mean going through control panel. Checking through the different liveries, all the planes are in USAF colors apart from a single Australian photo recon F4; the schemes being divided between camo, natural metal and blue schemes. One of the F5s is in the scheme worn by the plane Antoine de Saint-Exupery was shot down in - Saint Exupery being a well-known early aviator and author of some magical books, not least 'Wind, Sand and Stars', Flight to Arras', 'Southern Mail' and 'Night Flight' all of which are available from Amazon, the first two being classics. Another of the F5s is in the colors of the plane in which Adrian Warburton was shot down and he is the subject of another excellent book by Tony Spooner, the title being 'Warburton's War' - Warburton's deeds included flying so low into a heavily defended Italian harbor that he was below the maximum depression of the guns on the warships inside. You also get Glacier Girl, from the 'lost squadron' that got iced in Greenland, Richard Bong's 'Marge' and a clutch of other planes, including a couple fitted with rocket packs.

Looking at the addon in FSX, the visual model is as good as you would expect from Aeroplane Heaven, who have built up an excellent reputation over the years for Flight Simulator warbirds. The perspective Flight Simulator enforces on you hides the sheer size of the P-38, but it certainly looks the part and the airframe is nicely detailed, without going so overboard that it imposes too much of a hit on frame rates. You can spend a fair amount of time looking around the simulation, thanks to the opening canopy and nose locker and if you are keen, the models that have guns will fire them if you hit I, although of course, you can't shoot anything down in Flight Simulator. Neat way of getting noticed by the tower, though. Other keypresses allow you to open either of the canopy windows and drop the dive brakes, depending on which variant you have loaded and which version of the sim you are using; the other notable animation is the pilot, who looks around.

There isn't a 2D panel, but the virtual cockpit (VC) is just about fully functional; there are a few switches that don't work, but they don't do anything worth mentioning. Apart from the main panel, the only pop-up is the radio, which has a nice period look to it. The plane's systems are more or less fully simulated and it is possible to start the engines manually using the pilot's notes included in the manual. All the bitmaps stay sharp all the way up to 1600 x 1200 and stay fluid without any bugs of serious note.

The flight model must be about right for the P-38 - I have never even met anyone who has flown one, but although the aircraft was complex for a fighter of its day, thanks to having two engines, it was basically a lady to fly, otherwise they wouldn't have been able to train so many thousands of pilots to fly it at such short notice. Although a great mystique has grown up around flying warbirds today, in practice planes of this era couldn't be made too hard to fly, because otherwise the attrition rate due to accidents tended to exceed the kills they made in combat (this actually was the case for the Me109). So although the rate of roll isn't anywhere near that of planes like the Spitfire or the P-51, the P-38 does handle well and it isn't too hard to land either, as long as you keep some power on right until you flare.

Verdict? Overall a very competent simulation and the best P-38 package around. The choice of liveries is excellent and the only regret I have is that they didn't include the wonderful Yippee! livery that was worn by the 5000th P-38 Lockheed built, which was a J and my favorite livery on any plane, ever...

Andrew Herd
andy@flightsim.com

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