Well after lots and lots of looking for a P38 drop tank I came to the conclusion I'd headed down the road of unobtanium, so out comes the English wheel and a large tub of elbow grease. I'm now about eighteen months into this build now so will post pics of progress so far. First off a buck was built luckily my business has a CNC wood router so this was the easy bit. Followed by lots of hammering and wheeling. Lots more hammering.. Lots more wheeling... This is the bottom side so a section was cut out to make flat bottomed. Well thats it for part one, part two following soon, soon as I can figure out loading more pictures.
Ok got the photo uploading sorted so here's part two. Next bit was shaping some aluminum angle to make the exterior lip using a shrinker stretcher and propane torch to anneal. The tight radius at the back took a few attemts and about ten anneal cycles to get right. Welding on the lip Then TIG welding in the bottom panel, I've not done much aluminium welding till this project but by this stage I'm starting to get the hang of it. At this stage I'm starting to get a bit excited, so it was time to don the racing helmet and take a daft photo to entertain friends, wife, kids. Well first side took about eight months of my spare time, the second side went much quicker. Fast forward another two months and both sides of the body are done, still some finish panel beating to do on the top half but this will be done after its had the top cowl built and its been sectioned up into removable panels. In part three I'll cover the start of the chassis build...
Looks great. Has it been built to the correct dimensions of 10' 9" long and 21" diameter at widest point...?
Hi Gee Ram Nice to see posts from this side of the pond as well as the States. Tank is 13'6" by 36" as far as I could resurch there are two sizes the 13' footer that is aluminium and the smaller size you mention wich was made of steel. Its gonna be enough of squeez in this one so i'm glad its not 21" wide.
Holy crap !!! I imagine it's hard enough to just build a Belly Tank racer...without having to actually build the tank itself. That's amazing craftmanship!
"Ho´Lee Chit " said Confuzius when he saw this build Crazy stuff , I´ll be watching! Where are you going to drive it once finished? I guess there are just as many salt lakes in the UK as there are in Germany, right? hahaha
Yes, the 315 gal ferry tank was larger, I thought it was 12' 6" long by 36" dia? The large ferry tanks were not designed for dropping, hence being used for long distance ferry flights, not combat ops, which is what the droppable smaller 150 gal combat tanks were designed for, and thus much more flimsy in construction as well, as they were in effect disposable items.
You would just think they were laying around all those farms from way back then when they were actually dropping them to engage the enemy .
Yeah, but can you imagine what a drop tank looks like after it's fallen several hundred feet at 150 mph? I think all the drop tanks used here in the U.S. were probably unused military surplus.
Looks really good, and a blown Flathead for power should be awesome. I look forward to seeing more pictures of this build
Plus, they were not dropped over the UK anyway, combat tanks would have been dropped over the English Channel/North Sea en-route to Europe, once the tanks were empty, or overland in Europe prior to combat engagement.
weren't some of those drop tanks made of resin covered paper... could have been the mustang drop tanks... i have seen that some were paper on the history channel...
The Jalopy Journal
