OneManGang
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Tennessee vs The Maxims vs Ohio
Our beloved Tennessee Volunteers have an identity problem. Are they the team that fumbled and bumbled their way to victory against Appy State and Ohio or are they the focused aggressive team that blew VaTech out of Bristol Motor Speedway?
Having seen now near fifty years of Tennessee football in the confines of Neyland Stadium, you Humble Scribe has seen this movie before. During the waning years of Johnny Majors and through most of the reign of Sir Philip of Winchester, the Vols tended to play at exactly the level of their opponent for the day. Against an Alabama or Florida they might look ready to fleet up to the NFL. The next Saturday, against a Vanderbilt or Tiger High fans would scratch their collective noggins and wonder aloud if the Vols had ever played a down together.
So it is with Team 120.
There was a warning issued in this very space last week: Next up are the Ohio Bobcats. I caution Vol fans to remember that the last time the 'Cats hove onto the shores of Lake Loudon, they tied Tennessee in knots for most of the game and the Vols were lucky to escape with the 'W'.
History does tend to repeat.
******
The British were up against a wall. They had sent a commission to the United States in the early days of 1940 to buy stuff. The stuff they were buying were the weapons needed to fight Nazi Germany.
One of the things they knew they would need were fighters. The Brits were already building Hawker Hurricanes and Supermarine Spitfires as fast as they could but it was obvious more would be needed. The American P-40 was the most advanced fighter in the arsenal and the British were negotiating to buy as many as they could from the Curtiss company. Several of the members had met James Dutch Kindleberger of North American Aviation (NAA) during a visit he made to England before the war.
NAA was already supplying T-6 trainers to the RAF and the Fleet Air Arm and it was decided that since Curtiss would be hard-pressed to supply P-40s to both the US Army Air Corps and to the RAF, they would approach Kindleberger about building P-40s as well.
Kindleberger had come back from Britain convinced war was coming and that NAA needed to be prepared. He drew together a design team led by Edgar Schmued to begin concept work on a new fighter design. By the time the British showed up on his doorstep, the concepts were well along. Kindleberger offered a counter-proposal. What if he could build a fighter that would out-perform the P-40 and build it instead.
In May of 1940, as the Battle of France was nearing its disastrous end, the British agreed but with a crushing proviso. They would buy 320 of the new planes IF NAA could roll out a prototype and begin testing within 120 days. Also, the new plane would use the Allison V-1710 engine already in use on the P-40. Kindleberger took a deep breath and shook on it.
To the astonishment of all, 117 days after that handshake, a sleek, gleaming new plane rolled out of the NAA doors. Unfortunately, Allison could not supply an engine for nearly another month. The British deemed the conditions met, though.
On 26 October 1940, the North American NA-73X took to the skies and soon proved to be everything Kindleberger had promised being some 30mph faster than the P-40 and much more maneuverable. The major problem was that since all this took place before the US entered the war, the engine was a civilian version and lacked any kind of turbo-charging which meant performance above about 10,000 feet fell off dramatically. The same problem bedeviled early P-38 Lightnings sold to the British at about the same time.
The Brits were happy and with war production gearing up, the US Army took an interest in the new design. The Army decided that the fighter version didn't offer enough of an improvement over the P-40 and so modified it to be an attack plane with bomb racks and sights and dive brakes. They designated it the A-36.
The A-36 and its British cousins went on to establish a solid, if unspectacular war record.
All that changed in October of 1942 when the RAF sent five of the planes to Rolls-Royce to be fitted with the outstanding Merlin engine used in the Spitfire. It was a marriage that created a legend.
Performance jumped from a pedestrian 350 mph or so at 15,000 ft to a sizzling 440 mph at 27,000 feet. The US Army Air Corps was casting about for something to match the German Bf-109s and FW-190s and immediately worked out a deal for Packard to undertake mass-production of the Merlin engine which was then mated to a NA-73 airframe and designated it
the P-51B Mustang.
All the P-51s (and the later D models) did was to demolish the Luftwaffe beginning in February 1944 and continuing to the point that Ike was able to tell his boys going into Normandy, If you see planes overhead, they will be ours.
And now you know.
****
So, the question before us and the Vols of Team 120 is this: Will they continue to be the pedestrian somewhat underperforming group we saw against the Bobcats or will they finally throw off the past and emerge as the thoroughbreds they are capable of becoming?
We will know more ere our next gathering.
So how did the team do compared to the Maxims?
1. The team that makes the fewest mistakes will win.
The Vols managed to fumble the ball a whopping FIVE times but also managed to fal on them all. Allowing Ohio to claw its way back into the game after Tennessee's first possession was nearly a mistake of epic proportions.
2. Play for and make the breaks. When one comes your way SCORE!
The Vols created virtually no breaks Saturday. Much of this can be directly traced to the inability of the Vol defense to create any kind of pass rush with their base four down linemen. (grumbles)
3. If at first the game or the breaks go against you, dont let up PUT ON MORE STEAM!
The Vols seemed to sleepwalk through most of Saturday's tilt. They reminded me of a guy who answers an early-morning phone call, deals with whatever issue and then promptly goes back to sleep. This attitude versus an SEC opponent will be fatal.
4. Protect our kickers, our quarterback, our lead and our ballgame.
On the other side, Ohio seemed to have little difficulty generating pressure against Tennessee's deep and talented offensive line. Draw your own conclusions.
5. Ball! Oskie! Cover, block, cut and slice, pursue and gang tackle THIS IS THE WINNING EDGE.
This Maxim speaks DIRECTLY to intensity. This was an attribute sorely lacking in the Vols' effort. Indeed it can be argued that except for three quarters versus VaTech it has been lacking all season.
6. Press the kicking game. Here is where the breaks are made.
This was area where the Vols performed well. However, the injury to Cam Sutton cast a pall on the remainder of the game. Medley driving his kickoffs into the end zone was a definite plus.
7. Carry the fight to Ohio and keep it there for sixty minutes.
More like about ten minutes in fits and starts over the course of sixty minutes of game time. Not enough for an SEC for. Not by a long stretch.
[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]On the plus side, Tennessee is 3-0 for the first time in TWELVE YEARS. [/FONT]
Good Lord.
Brick by Brick, Baby!
MAXOMG
Suggested Reading:
Enzo Angelucci and Peter Bowers, The American Fighter
Roger A. Freeman, The Mighty Eighth
Michael O'Leary, USAAF Fighters of World War II
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Keeping Your Stories Alive
Three restored P-51 Mustangs in flight. The nearest is a P-51B model the other two are P-51Ds.
