MPN11,
He who relies on me for the "gen" is on a broken reed ! The position is: I flew 300-odd hours in the A-31 (Vengeance Mks I-III). I've never even
seen a A-35 (Mk IV), and know no more about them other than what I've read.
The A-35 never got out to India at all; all the work in Burma was done by A-31s (VV Mks I-II); the first VV Mk.III (FB series) does not appear in my log until 10th July '44 and by then all VV ops had ended out there. The Mk.IIIs continued doing odd jobs in '44-'45-'46.
A number of Mk.IVs found their way to Britain, but (
AFAIK) all were converted to TTs. The RAAF got Is and IIs and used them operationally, but I don't think the IVs they got at the end did much. Btw, the last Mk IV (A-35) came off the production line in Nashville in June'44 (P.C.S.)
So, all I
know is this:
we had six (groups of) main tanks in our wings, and a 20-gallon "trap tank" in the centre section. There were six switches for the main tanks, and (I think) one for the trap tank. In all, we were told, we had 220 US gallons (183 Imp). Cruise burned 60 Galls/hr, so we had 3 hrs endurance at, say, 160 mph - 480 miles max.
That was how it was.
Now the plot thickens. I quote from the P.C.S. "Vengeance", p.12:
"....the fuel system was radical and comprised two tanks of 100 gallon capacity on each side of the wing adjacent to the fuselage, one of which was the reserve tank. outboard of these on each side were 55 gallon capacity tanks in the inner panels inbound from the break and, beyond them in the outer panels, 45 gallon tanks, giving a total capacity of 400 US gallons..."
But what Mark is he talking about ? Almost certainly, the IV. The descriptive part of his book is liberally furnished with photos and drawings - but they are nearly all A-35. He has a pic, captioned:
"....Loading the wing guns in a Northrop V-72 (the original design, ie a Mk.I) at Hawthorne..." The armourer is clearly loading a (fabric) belt of
.50s - it's an A-35 (Mk.IV) !
So how is all this relevant ? As far as "Combat" is concerned - forget about the Mk.IV. It doesn't count. The P.C.S. description of wing tankage above (Mk.IV ?) relates to the same general pattern as our Mks I-III. But it's the same wing - how can you push double the volume of fuel into it ? (There was nowhere else internally to put fuel, if you put it in the rear fuselage the C.of G. would go beyond recall; there were never any drop tanks.
I've looked up my log (all I-IIIs). No single trip exceeds 2.40, except one to Tintha (3.10) is annotated as: "landed Palel to refuel". That clinches it: our range
must have been 4-500 miles max.
Cheers, Danny.