Veil of Percentages

With the blessing of the U.S. Army, Curtiss-Wright Corp. last week let out a military secret: the performance of its new fighters. Barred from releasing figures on speed, altitude capabilities or fire power of its newest pursuit ships (P-40F) Curtiss-Wright unbagged the cat by publishing certain percentages.

Curtiss-Wright took its old reliable P36 (the British Mohawk), arbitrarily gave its performance a figure of 100%, went on from there. Since the British have announced P-36's performance (323 m.p.h. at 15,100 feet, a service ceiling* of 32,800 feet), any schoolboy could figure what the new P-405 would do.

At 123% of P36 speed, P-40F figured out at 397 m.p.h. In service ceiling it had 170%, which would put it higher than most pilots could ever fly it. With such a ceiling, the P-40F can fight handily at around 25,000 feet. For its newest fighter Curtiss-Wright changed engines, from the liquid-cooled, U.S.-designed Allison (now 1,150 h.p.) to liquid-cooled, British-designed Rolls-Royce Merlin (1,300 h.p.), manufactured by Packard.

In fire power, the figures given by Curtiss-Wright showed vast improvement: 667% of the P36 (which was armed with one .30-caliber and one .50-caliber machine gun). From these figures few laymen could calculate just how many and what kind of guns the new P-40F carries. But anybody could understand the proud claim of P-40Fs builders: their new job is the hardest-hitting fighter in the world.

*The altitude at which rate of climb drops to 100 feet a minute.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.