Dudley Henriques wrote in
:

Bertie the Bunyip wrote:
"Blueskies" wrote in
. net:

LeVier did a lot of the high mach number dive tests in the 38, and
there definitely was a compressibility problem, mach tuck; the
whole
works. I know they added speed brakes but not sure at exactly what
stage. The engine rotation switch was early on in the program
according to Ethell; I believe in the YP38 stage before the first
production run. If I'm not mistaken, the high mach dives came after
the switch but I'm not at all certain of that.

--
Dudley Henriques
All the -38s sold to England had same rotation direction engines on
both sides all the way through. Just another odd thing...



Are you sure about that?


Bertie
I heard the same thing. The Brits raised hell about what they
considered
a high degree of possibility for unnecessary maintainence due to the
handed engines. On the practical side, the Brits had ordered a ton of
P40's which used the V1710 Allison with a right handed prop. The word
we
got was that the brits wanted the Allison's on the 38's to be
interchangeable with the P40 to cut down on cost.


Found some info on that in an old book I have. Apparently there were a
handful of unblown 38s delivered to the RAF with both engines RH but
they had a lot of problems and the remainder all had contra rotating
engines.


Bertie