Aerial Wires on 8th and 9th Air Force fighters during WWII

[ClydeM]

thanks for your comments guys and by the by Lee, your checks in the mail. clyde

[Lee_K]

Lee, I didn't know you cared that much but really, what did you think of the model? clyde

It was fantastic, as always.  You are one of the finest modelers on the planet and our club is very, very fortunate to have your outstanding work to inspect in person month in and month out.

While I don't have a huge interest in Mustangs (aerial wires aside  ), I've always preferred the B model and your model exquisitely captures the handsome lines of what is unquestionably a beautiful airplane.

Lee K

[Ryan K]

That AF stuff is outside my wheelhouse but I thought your model looked good.

[ClydeM]

Lee, I didn't know you cared that much but really, what did you think of the model? clyde

[Lee_K]

OK, you guys made me go home and look through all of my reference books and photos of 8th and 9th Air Force fighters (P-38, P-47, P-51, Spitfires), searching for evidence of an aerial wire.  Of the 400+ photos I looked at, there were none to be seen.  I did find one picture of a 15th Air Force (Italy-based) P-51D from the Tuskegee Airmen Red Tail squadron that had a wire, but it seemed to be the exception from other 15th AF fighter aircraft photos I looked at. 

I found this post saved from HyperScale in my files, explaining the deletion of the wire in the ETO:

...the antenna wire is for the Detrola LF receiver...it was good generally only in CONUS and was used in conjunction with the VHF set...it received only...you could only transmit on the VHF. The Detrolas were used mainly for tower comms, since most control towers in CONUS didn't have a VHF set. Also, weather and general flying information was transmitted on LF, not VHF, so having exclusively VHF radios deprived pilots of that information.

In Europe, the British used exclusively VHF, so the Detrolas weren't needed.

I asked a buddy who currently restores P-51s for a living, and whose father served as a mechanic for the 361st Fighter Group.  He agreed that aerial wires on ETO Thunderbolts and Mustangs were exceedingly rare, if ever used.

Just for fun, I looked at Pacific Theater Air Force fighters and it is hit and miss.  Those 318th P-47Ns on Ie Shima don't have any aerial wires.  But a number of P-51Ds in the Phillippines do.  It might have to do with where they were based and how tower communications were setup.  The P-38s, P-39s, and P-40s based in the Aleutian Islands don't seem to have any, either.

Bombers: B-17s, B-24s, B-25s, B-26s in the ETO did seem to have the aerial wires, as a rule.  My guess is that they had more communications requirements than the fighters, particularly with weather reports when ferrying over from the US.  A bomber usually did the navigation as the fighters followed their lead over Greenland.  Of course, it was easier and less dangerous to just ship the aircraft over the Atlantic on a liberty boat, which I believe the majority of fighters did.

So my friends, please feel free to build your models however you choose -- it's your model.  I will never sit and criticize someone's work as "wrong" -- I really only wanted to point out that you can save yourself some effort in the future if building an ETO P-38, P-47, or P-51 as most (and I can't definitively say that NO fighter had the wire -- that would be impossible to prove) didn't seem to have it.  I know I would be happy to learn otherwise, because it would be a pretty rare occurrence.  And as a modeler, I know I would be thrilled to learn that I didn't have to put that stupid wire on -- one less thing to mess up and the damn things always seem to break anyway.

Lee K