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I have read that the P-40 Exhaust often had shooting flames, it was particularly visible at night, as the P-40 transitioned to a fighter/trainer for Pilots in the U.S. during WWII a number of Trainees bailed from their hawks at night thinking the engine was on fire. It was enough of a problem that they had to incorporate it into the briefing before taking pilots out on the training flights. Long pronounced tendrils of flame is how I've heard it described.

I do not know if humidity or mixture was the culprit, what conditions were necessary to produce the flames, often you'll see P-40s with scorch marks back of the exhaust.

All of those big V12 engines will emit a glow/glare at night time, or in light where you can see them.

On early Spitfire, and Hurricanes, they often fitted glare shields for night flying, and I think they fitted flame damping exhausts on some of the later model P-40s.

In the picture you posted, those flames are from overpriming. (This doesn't seem to happen with the Accu Sim Warbirds at present).

Take a look at this video of Spitfire IX MH434 during a high powered engine run, showing the exhaust flames looking like blowlamps : -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDZmq2VrcNQ&t=350

Cheers

Paul

As I said in my post, I've read several accounts of the noticeable flames that came out of the P-40s exhaust. That was the only picture I could find of a P-40 emitting flames. The flames were particularly noticeable at night, some pilots thought the engine had caught on fire and bailed out of their aircraft. I thought it would be cool (because I've often flown the sim at night) if I could see flames once in a while.

Yes as Bradburger notes its not specific to the P-40 but all aircraft of the vintage, esp if a pilot over primes on start up. For night operations aircraft (ala Lancaster and night fighters etc) they where fitted with various designs to minimise the visibility of the glow to help with not being seen so easy in the night sky.

thanks,
Lewis

How cool of an effect would that be in accusim?

I can't see how the flames from over-priming during start-up would cause someone to bail out of an aircraft in flight, but it seems like that's something their not interested in.

Downtown wrote:I can't see how the flames from over-priming during start-up would cause someone to bail out of an aircraft in flight, but it seems like that's something their not interested in.

You don't get flames in flight, you get more of a glow, the flames are on the ground the glow is normally noticed during night flying depending on how the aircraft set out. You will notice many RAF aircraft of the era have dampers on to hide or dissipate the glow for the night work.

thanks,
Lewis

I think IL-2: Battle of Stalingrad does of a good job of depicting this. Check out some of the videos on YouTube.

[quote="Downtown"]I have read that the P-40 Exhaust often had shooting flames, it was particularly visible at night, as the P-40 transitioned to a fighter/trainer for Pilots in the U.S. during WWII a number of Trainees bailed from their hawks at night thinking the engine was on fire. It was enough of a problem that they had to incorporate it into the briefing before taking pilots out on the training flights. Long pronounced tendrils of flame is how I've heard it described.

I do not know if humidity or mixture was the culprit, what conditions were necessary to produce the flames, often you'll see P-40s with scorch marks back of the exhaust.


I do remember reading something about this. I cannot remember the aircraft, but something about training pilots thinking the engine was on fire, and bailing out.

Then I remember reading about some of the airliners in the 1950's with flames coming out of the exhaust, the passengers thinking the engines were on fire.

On Super Constellations (model L-1049) powered by turbo compound R-3350's, night time take-off's produced huge flames, to the horror of many first time passengers. But the fact was that if you couldn't read by the light of the flames, there was something wrong!!!

Check this out

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3PlWvoJyxw


Cheers,
Mike

That is a great bit of film! The FSDzigns group reproduced this fairly well with their freeware model 049A released several centuries ago. That is really quite a bit of flame coming out of those exhaust pipes! Thanks for sharing that, DB.

The most beautiful airliner ever produced!

Paughco wrote:The most beautiful airliner ever produced!

We are talking about the VC10 right?

cheers,
Lewis

Lewis - A2A wrote:

Paughco wrote:The most beautiful airliner ever produced!

We are talking about the VC10 right?

cheers,
Lewis

Too many magic mushrooms in your tea I fear !

Seriously can we get this for all accusim aircraft?