Sorry about the delay. Am traveling without password.

Most of the emergency advice I requested and received at the time came from non-P38 pilots and involved belly-landing.

I have one experience with bellying-in a P38, and it wasn't good. If you look at the side profile of the plane, you see why: the rudders hang well below the fuse, and the booms aft are quite small, hence fragile. Three years ago, it took me weeks to repair the empennage after going in gear-up.

Secondly, this is a large, fast, heavy plane. In order to have good elevator authority, my landings usually involve about 1/3 throttle till about 10 feet off the ground. Roll-outs without brakes are typically 3-400 feet. Full flaps can cut 10 mph or so off this speed, but unfortunately gives me much less elevator authority, leaving me with whatever attitude I had set up on approach.

So, while "coming in on the mains and letting the nose down after slowing" is a nice fantasy, my feeling (as I flew round and round) was that the square of the speed at which my nose gear touched the ground in a gear-down landing would be proportional to the kinetic energy of the decelleration (damage), since E=m(c)(c). And since my ability to keep the nose off was almost purely dependent on speed....well, you get the picture.

I do have complete throttle control, ie the engines die quickly at lowest trim, so I planned to shut them down right before landing to save engines and props.

After the incident, I received advice from a legendary RC warbird pilot who wasn't there: get close with the gear up, then hit the down switch 12 inches off the ground so the gear is coming up and trailing at a backwards angle as ground is contacted. I must say I would have tried that if I'd thought of it, but again, this is a very fast, heavy bird, and I'm not sure unlocked (although fully pressurized) gear would have been able to keep the tail off the ground.

Anyway, not finding any deep sandpits or foam trucks, or even enough slick tarps or cardboard to cover a 600' runway, I decided to try a flaps-down, gear-down, "low-speed", steep-approach technique and I did several go-arounds to try perfecting it (like I said, the engines are splendid and trustworthy).

Boy, one must never underestimate the value of a nice, round wheel (or a tight set screw).

mt