P-63 Kingcobra Warbird Wednesday Episode 37

well hello there and welcome to another episode of warbird wednesday my name is fred bell and i am here today with a really unique airplane the p63 the king cobra i'm going to tell you about how this airplane came to be it is one of uh it is designed derivative of the p39 the air cobra the bell air cobra and uh but no no relationship there greg now the interesting thing is today is the week of thanksgiving and mr kenny mr kenny my super incumbent my super incumbent assistant which i have no idea what that means uh has picked out a nice hat i will give you the the profile uh i hope you aren't gonna eat me this week are you you know but he brought me a nice turkey hat in honor of uh thanksgiving so there you go another nice catch by the drumstick from mr kenny now the p-63 is an interesting airplane in that it came out of a frantic design race that was going up into the start of world war ii you have to remember at that time we were now going into lowing monoplanes so the british were rearming with the hurricane and the spitfire we had the brewster buffalo we had the p40 and we were messing around with other uh designs the p-38 believe it or not greg also was was actually a pre-war design but this airplane's uh predecessor the p-39 was one of those as well now the p-39 and the p-63 they they had basically the same design element so i'm going to go over here and i'm going to pick up greg is obviously skipping on the budget this week so we have gone to the really teeny tiny uh airplane here but this is uh a good plan view of the p63 now the idea behind the airplane was simple they were this was a point defense or a pursuit fighter and the idea was this thing carried a big punch it carried a 37 millimeter cannon that was boresighted in the nose two eyebrow 50 machine guns and a couple of 50 caliber machine guns on each wing it could carry an under wing pod as well with additional armament and it had a it had a drop tank now the thing that they did about this airplane that is really unique and and is a testament you have to remember i've talked about no computers and doing everything with slide rule and if an inch is good two inches is better what they did with this airplane is just a testament to how ingenious they were the power plant that allison engine is actually behind the pilot the drivetrain goes through his legs and greg can probably get a graphic on this goes through his legs up to where the propeller is at if you can believe that now that think about the long drive train here and remember when it you know how if you spin a stick really fast it starts to wobble it's not balanced really well well imagine that you're providing the drive train to this propeller this big paddle that's up front and you've got to keep that thing balanced there's a transmission system in there there's a series of bearings in there these things were just incredibly complicated now greg i bet you didn't know this this actually what bell learned on these drive shafts came into something else what is bell known for not warbird wednesday not the telephone bell came into helicopters and one of the things was that what they learned from the drivetrain on this they actually put to very good use in later helicopter designs so the p-39 as it went into the pacific and it fought against the japanese it also fought in the european theater but it was pretty much outmatched by either the frontline german fighters at the time the me109 which would have been the e or the f model the g came later and then of course the in the pacific theater the primarily the japanese zero now the zero we're gonna remember the uh european aircraft flew higher the me109s were designed to fly higher they were also fuel injected they were supercharged the japanese airplanes remember we talked about the zero that radial engine was more of a bantamweight fighter could climb really well could roll it didn't do well in a dive against these heavier airplanes because these airplanes can were built a little bit heavier carried heavier armament so they they could out dive the zero but the zero had the advantage and what we were doing at that time in especially in the pacific was just throwing things into the breach to try to to slow the japanese down until we could get better models of airplane out there we've talked about the hellcat and the bearcat and the p51 and the p47 so this was essentially a stop-gap airplane now the designers at bell it was also a lend-lease airplane that went to the soviets the soviets loved this airplane anything we gave the russians the russians put to very good use whether it was p-40s b-25s p-39s any of the equipment we gave them you gotta remember they were in a fight to the death uh with the germans and they were throwing everything they could think of into the line the other thing about the this airplane it didn't have terrific range the p-63 we'll talk about didn't have great range either but you have to remember that the russians were flying off of unimproved airstrips right behind the line and the line would move and you know pretty good every once in a while and so they did not have as big an issue with range as the allies did there goes that that's our steerman by the way if you can pick that up see it go by a lot of guys trained in the steerman to fly these but the uh they they just did not have the range the russians didn't matter as much because they were flying close air support in in either defense or in their offensive capabilities the americans remember they were doing two things they were either out in the pacific flying off in this case flying off uh airstrips on islands and they had to go out over water or they had to cover great distance airplane with with short legs doesn't do that very well for you and the other thing was in the british theater in the european theater where they were flying until we got over into italy and some in those areas there what was happening there was remember you're flying primarily bomber escort missions into europe and you've got to have really long range to be able to do that so the british had the spitfires later and the hurricanes that we're doing uh by the way i picked up that british accent broken crooked i'm hanging around the british people too much here but the the hurricane had a fairly short or could do fighter sweeps along with the british and so there really wasn't much need for this airplane in that theater but it did soldier on suffered pretty good losses at that time but the uh but it did soldier on now the soviets said hey we really like this uh this airplane but we want to make some design changes to it and bell aircraft realizing at that point that the uh the this airplane went into a design phase in two early prototypes that were called the xp uh 39e but who's quibbling the 39e and then it evolved into the xp 63. now this airplane is bigger than the p39 in all respects it's just larger larger wing longer fuselage i'm going to talk about some of the issues with it but the this airplane when it was tested and this is in the mid 40s it came in in 1943 it was built around that allison 1710 engine so we can talk about that and what that meant um and then it um it but it was bigger and and heavier based on the soviet design now why was that greg that was there for a very specific reason in that this airplane now i'm going to talk about something that it's notorious for and i'm going to talk about something that people don't know about this airplane and then i'm going to tell you a fred fun fact that greg is truly a fred fun fact the the this airplane if you got this airplane into a flat spin because of the way the tail was and you have to remember when you're talking about our aerodynamics you're either trying to get air flow over the ail ailerons the rudder and the tail so that you can change the pitch and the role of the airplane the change in the airflow is what causes that if you get an airplane into a flat spin because of the torque of especially these propeller driven airplanes and the airplane starts to spin they can get very very very difficult to get out of now one of the problems when they're spinning is inertia it starts to spin and it just feeds off that off that spin the the energy from the spin now one way to counteract that is to make a bigger rudder put more area into the wind stream or the other thing and we've shown it on some of these other airplanes is and this airplane doesn't have it but greg can probably find a picture of a p63 one of the later p63s that they put a strike on the bottom of the airplane which is basically a fin and that idea is to put more resistance into the wind stream right so the airplane won't spin but this airplane if you've got it into a flat spin the manual was open the door and get out it was unrecoverable in a flat spin now this unique design it does not have the air superiority canopy that we've seen in the later p-51s and the p-47 this is it it has a fairly good vision but the other thing is it what does it have greg it has car doors so can you imagine you're spinning and you're trying to get out of an airplane either opening the door into the windscreen you can pull the pin the door could come off there's a way to actually have the door fall off but as opposed to popping the canopy and falling out of the airplane if you're trying to get out of this airplane in a flat spin you're in real trouble so the russians when they looked at the p-39 they liked it they said we want more and they want a bigger airplane and they wanted heavier which meant more armor and more bulletproof glass and things like that but the the thing about it was andre and i'm going to screw up this guy's name andre kochikov came over from the soviet union and and andre your family i hope your family doesn't mind me having uh maybe i hope i didn't mess up your name i hate doing that but kochikov andre came over and he gave bell aircraft a whole bunch of design improvements based on the soviet input from the p-39 in combat so this airplane everything from i said the improved armor a little bit different visibility more bulletproof glass in the cockpit um a little bit changing the power plant now one thing they another thing they did was this 37 millimeter cannon they actually moved it a little bit forward to change the cg the center of gravity and the airplane which by the way helps in its performance and the other thing was is that added the ability to put a little bit more ammo in there i think it was from 30 to 58. but you gotta remember those are big shells those shells are about that big and so they're just going boom boom and if somebody hits you with a 30 millimeter 37 millimeter cannon shell in the air it's pretty much game over especially in a fighter they don't blow the wing off the airplane so the soviets gave all of the um the input that pretty much went into this airplane now he did a lot of flat tests or flat spin testing in this airplane to the point that he actually bent the airplane he buckled the fuselage in flat test spinning trying to pull the airplane out of a flat spin that's how much they put this airplane through when they were going through the design at the end of the day good old andre said to the engineers put in the manual jump out of the airplane and that was one in the manual that's if you read the manual on this airplane that's what's in the manual that actually goes back to andre's input in the flight test now the interesting thing about that was andre got a sponsorship from a parachute company as soon as he put that out so whether andre was getting uh some help from the parachute people i don't know but andre basically said if you get into a flat spin bailout now the airplane had that allison why did it have an allison for a couple of reasons the rolls-royce merlins well not really a couple of reasons one big reason that rolls-royce merlin was going into what airplane craig the p-51 and because of resources they decided to go with the allison which meant that the airplanes performance at high altitude because the difference in the superchargers was less and at the allison by the way for you allison affectionados i'm not dissing this engine at all this is a really really good american engine okay clear props but the reality was that it only meant that this airplane at about 21 000 feet could do about 410 420 miles an hour max speed if you went up to higher altitudes which is where those p-51s and those airplanes were operating at they they had much better performance envelope primarily because of difference in the turbo supercharger but the airplane had a tremendous gun so there are only about 3 300 of these built they had they did not have a good internal fuel store as i talked about with legs this airplane it inherited that from its um from its predecessor it did not have good internal fuel had great armor great armament could pack a big heavy punch but did not carry a lot of fuel now it the other thing about it uh that was was kind of interesting and most people don't realize this greg this was one of or the first all-electric airplane we have electric airplanes now the the the landing gear motors all the other stuff this was one of the first airplanes that incorporated a lot of electric servos and you know drive parts and all that kind of stuff into the airframe one of the first the rest of them were either hydraulic or they're mechanical this particular airplane now let's talk about this particular airplane then i'm going to get into my salute the this particular airplane was a was the i believe the fourth off the line the third or the fourth off the line with bell it went to naca we've talked about naca before it went to naca for wind tunnel testing and then basically when they were done with it after the war they rolled it out and it went to seed it it started to fall apart it was sold as surplus and the it became a playground toy in fact greg can probably find the image where you have little stairs up there now the amazing thing about that and i've seen the picture and i don't know if greg can find it but the armament was still in the airplane the the uh the the guns were still in the front of the airplane but it went uh as a playground toy for a for a company uh like a company park that company eventually fell into um into hard times or whatever the park went away it was sold it ended up with a commemorative air force at one point and then it came into our collection i believe in the in the early 80s at that point or somewhere in there the armament went away we're going to talk about that in a second uh and the airplane eventually was restored uh we are this is one of the delivery of the pictures that we have of it uh when it was in the united states so the livery that we have is fairly accurate now people always ask about who is pretty poly this was a pond aircraft and it still is part of the uh the legacy of the pond the museum owns this airplane but pretty polly is polly pond holly who is bob pond's daughter and we proudly fly with pretty poly on the nose of the airplane and actually if you look on the internet this is probably the most flown and prolific e63 out there that remember that air force has one there's a few others running around one of them is in pinball colors what was pinball pinball was like a brightly colored uh airplane that was used for target practice it was a p-63 was heavily armed and basically people would come in and shoot at it that's why they called it pinball and but i i actually like this this that's why some people ask well why isn't it in russian colors well in russian colors because this airplane was actually a flight test airplane it never left the united states and so there's there's just no reason to do that now the airplane as it stands now we fly it it does not have the armament in the nose and if you're sitting at home on youtube watching this and you have a 37 millimeter cannon in your front room and the p63 front armament give me a call i would be happy to talk to you about that because what's up there right now is uh the airplane did not come with a originally with a fire suppression system we're really getting into geek land here greg but there's a fire suppression system up there because you can imagine if you had a fire in this airplane the engine is behind you you'd have a you might not know the airplane so there's a fire suppression system up there this aircraft we fly it quite a bit for air shows and you know it goes up to reno to give you an idea in a situation like that an unmodified airplane like this it's about 20 miles an hour slower than a uh a p51d that is flying up there that stock so you could run this thing up to military power i would not suggest that you do that by the way but if you ran it to military power and the airplane up there it is not anywhere near as fast as a stock mustang which is very prolific so the what i want to do now is i'm going to put down my little demonstrator and i'm going to go to my stage 2. now greg in keeping i'm really afraid of this one i am terrified of this one greg this is scary this is now this is lester's fixins so dude wasn't it melba melbous fiction fixins lester's got into the fixins all right now lester created something i am man i'm afraid of this one this is uh pumpkin pie soda in honor of thank you thank you greg the turkey hat uh i maybe the uh severe case of indigestion i and greg is you know you guys don't get we're gonna make greg do a cameo one of these days but he's just saying there is no sell by date on this i am using the non-magnetic magnetic can opener that just keeps popping up so we're gonna go ahead and open this so the stage two today is and somebody we don't recognize very much but our allies the the soviets uh and the russians um if they had not if they've been knocked out of the war can you imagine uh how long that war would have gone on and um and imagine the amount of casualties i think the russians suffered somewhere in the neighborhood of about 20 million people lost in that conflict it was a very large number and um so what i want to do is all those soviet pilots who were flying under and they were our allies flying under really difficult conditions they were they they did a good job they kept us in the war and the end of the day they probably wore the germans down and saved a lot of lives so i want to salute all those lend lease pilots all the people that did the air bridge that flew these airplanes out of the united states and flew over alaska which was really scary stuff all the folks that were involved in that i salute you god bless you and by the way happy thanksgiving well the last one was apple pie this is pumpkin pie it has it has like a a spicy finish um it's not awful it's not something i would drink but uh but it's not something i would drink either it's something i'm going to set down but thank you greg in honor of thanksgiving and to you at home so there's our pumpkin pie soda and our salute now a couple of other we're going to do a fred fun fact and then we're going to kind of wrap up with our gratuitous product placement now this airplane believe it or not and i was blown away by this because this is complete complete uh kismet here this airplane actually with the soviets uh survived in a wendy's basis survived the uh the end of world war ii and was actually flying with some uh soviet fighter regiments up until the 1950s and there's actually an account of two p 80s strafing a bunch of p-63s in the far east that were on some soviet air base and it was a big mix up and you can go out and read about it but the bottom line is the united states said they really didn't know that they were supposed that was supposed to happen so on and so forth but it caused nato to give this ever you know like the mig you know has like the fox bat and the various uh airplanes that nato gives a a nickname to right an allied code name kind of like the the uh the japanese during the war that you know the betty and those types of things for their airplanes greg do you know what this one is this code name nato code name for this airplane is fred who knew a bell airplane with the nato and a code name fred so so isn't that kind of cool i i thought that was kind of cool so so this is the code name fred airplane now uh it saw one other thing in that about a hundred or so of these airplanes were um were given to the french and the p-63s actually flew in indochina they flew air support into china they were replaced uh fairly quickly in the early 50s by by the the bearcats that were given to the french and then they kind of just played they went on into history but uh and then they kind of fell into affectionate hands they were in some there were some really dedicated air racers at one time that actually flew these they cut the wings down and did some other things but the airplane other than a couple of the the museums the flying museums operating them they've they've kind of gone into history now if you want to get your king cobra fred shirt we should get the image with fred across it and code name fred but the the king cobra the p63 shirt this is a stan stokes image by the way it's just a fantastic image was originally done for when we aerate the airplane up at reno you can pick that up on our web store and there's also if you want to get your allison on your allison engine on there's a great shirt that is uh also wears the uh the p63 that is also featuring the allison so that is very very cool this is one of those airplanes as i said it's a flying airplane our collection it is a unique airplane you will not see very many of these flying so i encourage you to come over to the museum and check it out what i want to do is as i said we're filming just before thanksgiving from our family to yours god bless you and may you all have a have a wonderful thanksgiving we all have a lot to be thankful for my name is fred bell i'm the vice chairman of the palm springs air museum thanks for visiting us have a great day [Music] [Music] so [Music] do [Music] you

Channel: Palm Springs Air Museum

Views: 35,261

Keywords: Palm Springs Air Museum, Patreon

Id: X1M0Mce2rec

Length: 28min 28sec (1708 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 25 2020