Malta Aircraft Defence

[Adriano Baumgartner]

Climb performance. All the variants of the P-40 were big, heavy airplane with relatively poor power-to-weight ratios. P-40 pilots trying to follow a climbing Bf 109F or A6M Zero often found themselves stalled and helpless (early in the war, Japanese pilots routinely baited and killed pursuing enemy aircraft using the hineri-komi maneuver (mentions of this tactic appear in 1942 and 1943 intel reports). One pilot with the 325th Fighter Group, the "Checkertails", complained, "We would stooge around and wait to get bounced" by Bf 109Fs and FW 190As using "dive and zoom tactics which gave us so much trouble." Only if the Germans tried to turn with the American P-40s (which they sometimes did), did the P-40s have much chance of drawing blood.

https://www.reddit.com/r/WarCollege/...e_p40_perform/