Lockheed P-38 Lightning gallery

The Lockheed P-38 Lightning was an American fighter aircraft of the World War II. Developed after a United States Army Air Corps request, the aircraft had twin booms with the engines mounted forward and a single, central nacelle containing the pilot and armament. The engine sounds were a unique, rather quiet "whuffle," because the exhausts were muffled by the turbochargers of the twin Allison V12s. The canopy could not be opened without severe buffeting, so pilots were often too hot in the tropics. In northern Europe, the distance of the engines from the cockpit prevented effective heating of the cockpit, thus it was always either too hot or too cold. However, later variants of the P-38 received modifications that solved this problem.
The aircraft was used in a number of different roles. It was equipped with droppable fuel tanks under its wings, and used extensively as a long-range escort fighter. The Lightning was also used for dive bombing, level bombing, ground strafing and photo reconnaissance missions.

Design and development

Lockheed designed the P-38 in response to a 1937 United States Army Air Corps request for a high-altitude interceptor, capable of 360 miles per hour at altitude of 20,000 feet, (580 km/h at 6100 m). The Bell P-39 Airacobra and the Curtiss P-40 Warhawk were designed to the same requirements.
The Lockheed design team, under the direction of “Kelly” Johnson, incorporated a number of designs different from existing fighter aircraft. Existing piston engines did not produce the desired performance therefore two turbo-supercharged 12-cylinder Allison V-1710 engines which had not been rated at even 1000 hp (746 kW) were used. After considering a range of configurations, the Lockheed team chose twin booms, seen earlier on the Fokker G.I, to accommodate the empennage and the engines with a central nacelle for the pilot and armament. The propellers rotated in opposite directions to eliminate the effect of torque. The superchargers were positioned in the booms, behind the engines. Armament comprised of four machine guns in the nose of the nacelle clustered around a cannon. The design was the first fighter to utilize tricycle undercarriage.
The prototype Lockheed Model 22, later designated XP-38, rolled out in December 1938 and first flew on 27 January 1939. It set a cross-continent speed record by flying from California to New York on 11 February 1939 of seven hours, two minutes, including two fuel stops. Unfortunately, the prototype landed short of the runway in New York and was wrecked, much to the distress of the Lockheed engineering team. They had opposed the flight, but it was done at the insistence of General Henry "Hap" Arnold, commander of the USAAC, as a publicity stunt. Although the loss of the aircraft was a serious setback (putting the program back two years), on the basis of the record flight, the Air Corps ordered 13 YP-38s in April 1939.
Manufacture of the YP-38s proved troublesome, and the first example didn't roll off the production line until September 1940 (its first flight on 16 September 1940), with the last delivered in June 1941. Although they looked similar to the hand-built XP-38, they were substantially redesigned and differed greatly in detail. They were lighter, and included changes in engine fit, particularly in that propeller rotation was reversed, with the blades rotating outwards (away) from the cockpit at the top of their arc rather than inwards as before. This change, according to Johnson, improved the aircraft's stability as a gunnery platform.
Although weapons were not fitted in most of these aircraft, they were designed to carry Browning .50" (12.7mm) machine guns with 200 rounds per gun, two .30" (7.62mm) Brownings with 500 rounds per gun, and an Oldsmobile 37mm cannon with 15 rounds.
France, Britain and the USAAC has already placed orders for the P-38. The French and the British ordered a total of 667, with Model 322F for the French and Model 322B for the British. Each variant had unique modifications for their respective air arms, such as metric measurements on the flight indicators for the French aircraft, but they both shared a major change from all other P-38 variants in that turbo-superchargers were deleted and the left-handed and right-handed engine arrangement was changed to twin right-handed engines.
As turbo-superchargers were a new technology, the Anglo-French purchasing commission was concerned that turbo-superchargers might lead to delays, and being intended for medium-altitude combat, were not needed. The requirement for sole use of right-handed engines was for commonality with the large numbers of Curtiss Tomahawks both nations had on order. (Moreover, the turbocharged engines were prohibited from export by the US government.) Lockheed engineers protested strongly against this decision and privately labeled the variant the "castrated" P-38.
After the fall of France in June 1940, the British took over the entire order. They decided that only the first 143 of the order would be delivered in the unsupercharged format as Model 322 Lightning Mk Is, with the remaining 524 to be delivered with turbo-superchargers and left- and right-handed engines as Model 322 Lightning Mk IIs. Three of the unsupercharged Lightning Is were delivered to the UK in March 1942 and were promptly given a thumbs-down. They "topped out" at 480 km/h (300 mph) and had nasty handling characteristics. The entire order was canceled.
The remaining 140 Lightning Is were completed for the USAAF with counter-rotating engines but still minus turbo-superchargers. They were relegated to United States Army Air Forces training units under the designation RP-322. These aircraft helped the USAAF train new pilots to fly a powerful and complex new fighter. The RP-322 was a fairly fast aircraft at low altitude and well suited as a trainer.
The other positive result of this fiasco was to give the aircraft the name "Lightning." Lockheed originally dubbed the aircraft Atalanta in the company tradition of naming their planes after mythological and celestial figures, but the RAF name won out.
Thirty initial production P-38 Lightnings were delivered to the USAAF in mid-1941. Although not all these aircraft were armed, when they were, they were fitted with four .50s (instead of the two .50 and two .30 of their predecessors) but the 37mm was retained. They also had armor glass, cockpit armor and fluorescent cockpit controls. One was completed with a pressurized cabin on an experimental basis and designated XP-38A.
These 30 aircraft were part of an order for 66, but in light of USAAF feedback, the remaining 36 in the batch were fitted with various small improvements such as self-sealing tanks and enhanced armor protection to make them combat capable. The USAAF specified that these 36 aircraft were to be designated P-38D. As a result, there never were any P-38Bs or P-38Cs. None of these early production variants of the Lightning ever saw combat; their main role was to work out bugs and give the USAAF experience with handling the type.
Tail flutter was quickly found to be a problem. In an attempt to fix it, mass balances were attached to little booms in the middle of the elevator. This fix was derided by Johnson, who regarded the weights as useless, and, in fact, the buffeting eventually proved to be due to the straight connection of the wing root to the fuselage pod. A few aerodynamic changes, most particularly the addition of a wing-root fillet, solved the problem. Nonetheless, the external balances were a feature of every P-38 built from then on.
A more serious problem was "compressibility stall" , the tendency of the controls to simply lock up in a high-speed dive, leaving the pilot no option but to bail out. The tail structure also had a nasty tendency to fall apart under such circumstances; this defect killed a YP-38 test pilot, Ralph Virden, in November 1940.
USAAC Major Signa Gilkey managed to stay with a YP-38 in a compressibility lockup, riding it out until he got to denser air, where he recovered using elevator trim. This led to experiments that would eventually resolve the problem.
In the meantime, the new P-38 had other defects. The most dangerous was that both engines were "critical" engines—losing one on takeoff, which often occurred, created "critical torque," rolling the plane towards the live engine's wingtip, rather than the dead engine's. Normal training in flying twin-engine aircraft when losing an engine on takeoff, would be to push the remaining engine to full throttle; in the P-38, the resulting critical torque produced such an uncontrollable asymmetric roll the aircraft would flip over and slam into the ground. Eventually, procedures were devised to allow a pilot to deal with the situation by reducing power on the running engine, feathering the prop on the dead engine, and then increasing power gradually until the aircraft was in stable flight.

Operational service

The F-4, a P-38E in which the guns were replaced by four cameras, was the first Lightning to see combat, beginning operations out of Australia and then New Guinea in April 1942. Three of the F-4s were operated by the Royal Australian Air Force in this theater for a short period beginning in September 1942.
By June 1942, P-38s were operating in the Aleutian Islands as well. The fighter's long range made it well-suited to the campaign over the almost 2,000 km (1,200 mile) long island chain, and it would be flown there for the rest of the war. It was one of the most rugged environments available for testing the new aircraft under combat conditions. More Lightnings were lost due to weather and other conditions than enemy action. There were cases where Lightning pilots, mesmerized by flying for hours over gray seas under gray skies, simply flew into the water. Nonetheless, the P-38 scored successes. On 4 August 1942, two P-38Es, operating at the 1,600 km (1,000 mile) end of a long-range patrol, happened upon a pair of Japanese Kawanishi H6K "Mavis" flying boats and destroyed them. They were the first Japanese aircraft to be shot down by the Lightning.
Lightnings of the 1st Fighter Group were being flown across the Atlantic via Iceland to England, though most of them made the trip on freighters. On 15 August, a P-38F and a P-40 operating out of Iceland shot down a Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor shipping raider over the Atlantic. This was reputedly the first Luftwaffe aircraft destroyed by the USAAF.
The Lightnings sent to England were part of the force being built up for the invasion of North Africa. The invasion took place in November 1942, and Lightning units, including a photo-reconnaissance unit under command of Colonel Elliott Roosevelt, the American president's son, then began acquiring familiarity with operating under combat conditions and matching their skills and aircraft against the enemy.
The Lightning proved maneuverable at low altitudes, mostly due to very docile low-speed stall characteristics. The contra-rotating props had the benefit of eliminating the effects of engine torque, and on occasion a Lightning could even out-turn smaller fighters. However, maneuverability was not its strong suit, its major virtue in combat being a "terrific zoom climb" that would leave pursuers in the dust. Luftwaffe pilots also quickly learned not to make head-on attacks on the P-38, since its concentrated firepower ensured mutual destruction. Although not the best dogfighter, the P-38 was a formidable interceptor and attack aircraft and in the hands of a good pilot could be dangerous in air-to-air combat. The P-38 remained a force in the Mediterranean for the rest of the war.
A growing need for long-range escort fighters in Northwest Europe to protect heavy bomber operations resulted in four groups of Lightnings being deployed to the 8th Air Force in 1943-44. Although the P-38 gained a reputation with the Luftwaffe as the "fork-tailed devil," its performance at frigid high altitudes was disappointing and it proved difficult to maintain. By September 1944, all the Lightning groups in the 8th Air Force had converted to the P-51.
The Lightning proved ideally suited for the Pacific theater, as it combined excellent performance with very long range. While the P-38 could not out-maneuver the Zero and most other Japanese fighters, its speed and climb gave American pilots the option of choosing to fight or run and its focused firepower was even more deadly to lightly-armored Japanese warplanes than to the Germans. Jiro Horikoshi, designer of the Zero, wrote: "The peculiar sound of the P-38's twin engines became both familiar and hated by the Japanese all across the South Pacific."
General George C. Kenney, commander of the USAAF Fifth Air Force operating in New Guinea, could not get enough P-38s, though since they were replacing serviceable but inadequate P-39s and P-40s, this might seem like guarded praise. But Lightning pilots began to compete in racking up scores against Japanese aircraft, including one of the most famous missions of the war, the interception of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto on 17 April 1943.
Yamamoto was the architect of Japan's naval strategy in the Pacific, including the attack on Pearl Harbor. When American codebreakers found out that he was flying to Bougainville Island to conduct a front-line inspection, 16 Lightnings were sent on a long-range mission to intercept and kill Yamamoto: four to actually attack the bombers and the other 12 as top cover. The mission went off perfectly, the Lightnings met Yamamoto's Mitsubishi G4M "Betty" bomber and escorting Zero fighters just as they arrived, and the G4M was shot down over the jungle. The Admiral was killed.

Postwar operations

The end of the war left the USAAF with thousands of war-weary P-38s on their hands, rendered obsolete by the jet age. 50 late-model Lightnings were provided to Italy and operated for several years, with a dozen sold to Honduras. The others were put up for sale for US$1,200 apiece to whoever wanted one, and the rest were scrapped.
Lockheed test pilot Tony LeVier was among those who came up with the money to buy a P-38, turning it into an air racer. The Lightning was a popular contender in the air races from 1946 through 1949, with brightly colored Lightnings making screaming turns around the pylons.
F-5s were bought by aerial survey companies and used for aerial mapping. From the 1950s on, however, the use of the Lightning steadily declined, and, today, only a little more than two dozen exist, with a handful still flying. One particularly pretty example is a P-38L owned by the Lone Star Flight Museum in Galveston, Texas, painted in the colors of Charles MacDonald's Putt Putt Maru.
The P-38's final report card gave somewhat mixed grades. On the negative side, most variants were certainly harder to fly than the best single-engine fighters and in early models, pilots suffered badly from the cold in northern climates, and their twin turbocharged Allisons were temperamental. A good portion of Lightnings lost during the war were brought down by engine difficulties rather than the enemy, with unscheduled engine changes common, which contributed to the plane's relatively low kill-ratio. Up until the "J-25" variant, P-38's were often sitting ducks to Luftwaffe fighters because of the problematic engines and the lack of dive flaps to counter compressibility in dives. German fighter pilots would often go into steep dives because they knew that the Lightnings would be reluctant to follow.
Early variants did not have reputations for being maneuverable aircraft, though they could be surprisingly agile at low altitudes if flown by a capable pilot, using the P-38's forgiving stall characteristics to their best advantage. From the P-38F-15 model onwards, though, a "combat maneuver" setting was added to the P-38's Fowler flaps. When deployed at the eight-degree maneuver setting, the flaps allowed the P-38 to outturn many contemporary single-engined fighters at the cost of some added drag. The addition of hydraulically-boosted ailerons, starting from the P-38J-25, also improved roll rate and response. Nevertheless, the Lightning's greatest virtues were long range, heavy payload, high speed, fast climb and concentrated firepower.
Clustering all the armament in the nose meant that unlike most other US aircraft with wing-mounted guns, where the trajectories were set up to criss-cross at several points in a "convergence zone," Lightning pilots had to be good shots. For example, Dick Bong would fly recklessly in towards his targets to make sure he hit them, in some cases flying through the debris of his victim. However, the nose-mounted guns did not suffer from having their useful ranges limited by pattern convergence, meaning good pilots could shoot much farther. A Lightning could reliably hit targets at any range from point-blank to 1,000 yards, whereas other fighters had to pick a single convergence range between 100 and 250 yards. The clustered weapons had a "buzz-saw" effect on the receiving end, making the aircraft terrifyingly effective for strafing as well.

Variants

Over 10,000 Lightnings were manufactured in all; it was one of the few combat aircraft that had been in production at the beginning of the war that was still in production at the end. The Lightning had a major effect on other aircraft. One example is the fact that the Lightning's wing (in a scaled-up form) was used on the L-049 Constellation.
The first combat-capable Lightning was the P-38E, which featured improved instruments, electrical systems and hydraulic systems. New Curtiss Electric duraluminum propellers (though early P-38E production retained the older Hamilton Standard Hydromatic hollow steel propellers) were fitted. The definitive armament configuration, featuring four 12.7 mm machine guns with 500 rounds per gun and a Hispano 20 mm cannon with 150 rounds instead of the unreliable Oldsmobile 37 mm gun, was standardised.
Interestingly, while the machine guns had been arranged symmetrically in the nose on earlier variants, they were "staggered" in the P-38E and later versions, with the muzzles sticking out of the nose in the relative lengths of roughly 1:4:6:2. This was done to ensure a straight ammunition belt feed into the weapons, as the earlier arrangement had led to jamming.
The first P-38E rolled out of the factory in October 1941. 210 P-38Es were built. They were followed, starting in April 1942, by the P-38F, which incorporated racks inboard of the engines for fuel tanks or a total of 900 kg (2,000 pounds) of bombs. 527 P-38Fs were built. Over a hundred P-38Es were completed in the factory or converted in the field to a photo-reconnaissance variant, the F-4, in which the guns were replaced by four cameras. Most of these early reconnaissance Lightnings were retained stateside for training, but the F-4 was the first Lightning to see combat, beginning operations out of Australia and then New Guinea in April 1942. Three of the F-4s were operated by the Royal Australian Air Force in this theater for a short period beginning in September 1942.
The P-38F was followed in early 1943 by the P-38G, utilizing more powerful Allisons of 1,400 hp (1,040 kW) each and equipped with a better radio. A total of 1,082 P-38Gs were built. The P-38G was followed in turn by 601 similar P-38Hs, with further uprated Allisons (1,425 hp [1,060 kW] each), an improved 20 mm cannon and a bomb capacity of 1,450 kg (3,200 pounds). These models were also field-modified into F-4B and F-5A reconnaissance aircraft.

Operators

Australia
China
France
Portugal
United Kingdom
United States

Post-war

Italy
Honduras

General characteristics ( Lockheed P-38L )

Crew: One
Length: 37 ft 10 in (11.53 m)
Wingspan: 52 ft 0 in (15.85 m)
Height: 9 ft 10 in (3.00 m)
Wing area: 327.5 ft² (30.43 m²)
Airfoil: NACA 23016 / NACA 4412
Empty weight: 12,780 lb (5,800 kg)
Loaded weight: 17,500 lb (7,940 kg)
Max takeoff weight: 21,600 lb (9,798 kg)
Powerplant: 2× Allison V-1710-111/113 liquid-cooled turbosupercharged V-12, 1,600 hp (1,194 kW) each
Zero-lift drag coefficient: 0.0268
Drag area: 8.78 ft² (0.82 m²)
Aspect ratio: 8.26

Performance ( Lockheed P-38L )

Maximum speed: 414 mph at 25,000 ft (667 km/h at 7,620 m)
Stall speed: 105 mph (170 km/h)
Range: 1,100 mi combat, 2,600 mi ferry (1,770 km / 3,640 km)
Service ceiling: 44,000 ft (13,400 m)
Rate of climb: maximum: 4,750 ft/min (1,448 m/min)
Wing loading: 53.4 lb/ft² (260.9 kg/m²)
Power/mass: 0.16 hp/lb (0.27 kW/kg)
Lift-to-drag ratio: 13.5

Armament ( Lockheed P-38L )

1x Hispano M2(C) 20 mm cannon with 150 rounds (2 AP, 2 tracer and 2 HE ammo belt composition) and 4x Colt-Browning MG53-2 0.50 in (12.7 mm) machine guns with 500 rounds per gun. The rate of fire was about 650 rounds per minute for the 20x110 mm cannon round (130 g shell) at a muzzle velocity of about 880 m/s, and for the 12.7x99 mm MGs (43-48 g), about 850 rpm at 840 m/s velocity.
4x M10 three-tube 4.5 in (112 mm) rocket launchers or:
10x 5 in (127 mm) HVAR's (High Velocity Aircraft Rocket) and/or:
either 2x 2,000 lb (908 kg) or 2x 1,000 lb (454 kg), 4x 500 lb (227 kg) or 4x 250 lb (114 kg) bombs