Posted on 10/29/2025 6:49:59 AM PDT by Red Badger
367,442 views Oct 26, 2025 #worldwar2 #ww2history #ww2 Why one aircraft mechanic installed unauthorized piano wire in P-38 control systems during WW2 — and saved 80 to 100 American pilots' lives. This World War 2 story reveals how a six-inch piece of wire changed aerial combat in the Pacific.
August 17, 1943. Technical Sergeant James McKenna, an aircraft mechanic with the Fifth Air Force at Dobodura airfield, New Guinea, watched another pilot prepare for a mission against Japanese Zeros. The P-38 Lightning was fast and powerful. But it couldn't turn with a Zero. The control cables had slack. A three-eighths inch delay between stick movement and aircraft response. That tiny delay was killing pilots. Every training manual said the cable tension was within specifications. Engineering officers called it acceptable tolerance.
They were all wrong.
What McKenna discovered that August morning wasn't about following regulations. It was about physics and leverage in a way that contradicted everything the Army approved. He bent a six-inch piece of piano wire into a Z-shape and installed it as a cable tensioner without authorization. Lieutenant Hayes flew the modified aircraft that morning and destroyed three Zeros in seven minutes. By September, forty P-38s had the modification spreading mechanic to mechanic across the Pacific. And pilots survived.
This technique spread unofficially through fighter squadrons crew chief to crew chief, improving kill ratios from two-to-one against Americans to nearly even before Lockheed integrated it into the P-38J model. The principles discovered at Dobodura continued to influence aircraft control systems through the Vietnam War.
34 Minute Video of One Man's actions that saved the lives of many pilots..............
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/3371456/murray-joseph-shubin
https://military-history.fandom.com/wiki/Murray_J._Shubin#Ace_in_a_day
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_J._Shubin#Ace_in_a_day
http://bulletin-archive.kenyon.edu/x1481.html
https://warbirdsresourcegroup.org/URG/URG_legends_main_shubinMJ.html
My suspicion is AI. And they all feature some martinet of an officer indignant and angry at the lowly soldier’s invention, threatening them etc.
SORTA LIKE THROTTLE LAG
ENGINEERS CLAIMED IN THE 50’S THAT A RACING VEHICLE COULD NOT ACCELERATE BEYOND 169 MPH IN A 1/4 MILE FROM A STANDING START.
TODAY: TOP FUEL DRAGSTERS ARE GOING 340 MPH IN A QUARTER MILE FROM A STANDING START.
SOME ENGINEERS ALSO CLAIMED BUMBLEBEES COULD NOT FLY——
And don’t forget the STP sticker!
PTO.. and the title of the video claims P-38s were outmaneuvering Zeros. That wasn’t a thing…
I know an engineer who knows every ******* thing.
The F-4 had hydraulic controls, as you know.
In the past few weeks there are many “new” WW2 videos on Youtube, all AI generated. They are garbage fantasy with no documented basis. All they accomplish is to create myths and cloud the truth...but, isn’t that the purpose for AI? Sow confusion. I give them all a “thumbs down” when I come across them.
Recently there has been a plague of these AI generated, AI narrated WW2 videos. They all feature wildly exaggerated stories, preposterous claims, and almost never provide a verifiable source. They are essentially made up. They are overly long, endlessly repetitive - 45 minutes to tell a 5 minute story to get the guppies to watch more ads.
They are dishonest in another way: they appear under a large number of channel names, so if you block the channel, a new channel (by the same creator) will still clog up your recommended list, in essence a low risk but annoying virus. This last is enough reason to never go to a site like this.
You should have read some of the viewer comments on this one - a mix of uproarious derision and outrage - before polluting this site. You have done FReepers a big disservice.
Admins should remove this post.
LOL! No P-38 ever came close to outmaneuvering a zero. They were faster - especially in a dive. They could be very effective using boom and zoom tactics of diving on their targets from high altitude, shooting them up and using their superior speed to zoom away before the Zero could do anything about it. Then they’d climb and do it again....and again....and again....etc.
But hang around and try to fight a maneuver battle with a zero? No. That was a recipe for certain death.
Zactly.
Doesn’t he pitch for the Dodgers?
Ironic isn't it?! I wonder what my Pacific War veteran father would say...
A WARRANTY ON A MILITARY WAR PLANE? You’ve got to be seriously stupid to believe this is real.
EVERYTHING WW2 Records puts on YouTube is pure bullcrap.
You always exploit your airplane’s superior capabilities in a dogfight. Th P-38 was 75 mph faster than a Zero, so it would be stupid to ignore your speed advantage and risk turning with one. If you got caught with a Zip on your tail and didn’t simply motor away from him, it was your own stupidity that killed you.
Piano wire my ass.
Yes. But my point is that one can move a control stick VERY quickly. Same is true in light aircraft. Particularly when there is “slack”...
Done dogfights between an F-4 (me) and aggressor pilots flying F5s. The F5 had a big turning advantage. The F4 had a big power advantage. If you fought a turning fight with an F5, they’d tear you apart. If you insisted on an energy fight, you could beat them easily.
As you put it: “You always exploit your airplane’s superior capabilities in a dogfight.”
Thank you!
Those guys lived in interesting times and got some good toys.
That was my thought as well. We never bought a foreign-made car, much less a Japanese or German car.
Ironic isn’t it?! I wonder what my Pacific War veteran father would say...
....So why are so many unnecessary things invented.....?
These “new” WW2 videos full of fictional “little guy is right” are not just clickbait. They’re part of a campaign to condition young men, who don’t know these stories are fake, to think of themselves as potentially having an individual role in globalists’ wars.
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