Lockheed P-38 Lightning variant
Lockheed P-38 Lightning P-38M
The P-38M Night Lightning was the last designated Lightning variant and the only one engineered at the factory as a night fighter. Lockheed produced it by converting P-38L airframes: a cramped second cockpit for a radar operator was added behind and above the pilot, a radar pod was slung under the nose, and the aircraft were finished in flat black with conical flash hiders on the guns. Seventy-five were converted. It came too late: testing ran into the summer of 1945 and it saw little service in the Pacific before the war ended, never engaging in combat. It went on to serve in occupied Japan and, in CIA hands, flew in the 1954 Guatemalan coup.
- 75
- Units built
History
From squadron improvisation to factory contract
The Lightning's night career began in the squadrons rather than on the drawing board. In the South Pacific, detachments of the 6th Fighter Squadron flying Douglas P-70s in New Guinea and on Guadalcanal also flew P-38Gs at night, and the New Guinea detachment went as far as turning two Lightnings into two-seaters carrying SCR-540 radar inside a drop tank; the unit was disbanded before they could be tried in combat. In February 1944 the 418th Night Fighter Squadron at Dobodura, in Papua New Guinea, fitted radar to its P-38s, which until then had relied on searchlights to find targets in the dark; a Lt. Richardson and a radar mechanic were awarded the Legion of Merit for the work. Unmodified P-38Gs and P-38Js kept flying night sorties over New Guinea and Guadalcanal and scored a few interceptions, and in the Philippines the 547th Night Fighter Squadron used two single-seat P-38Js with APS-4 radar with some success in late 1944 and early 1945.
Behind all this lay a gap in the Army Air Forces inventory: the purpose-built Northrop P-61 Black Widow was arriving late. Meanwhile, a P-38J was adapted at Wright Field as a test-bed for the AN/APS-4 radar. It was first carried in a pod under the fuselage behind the nose wheel, but cartridge cases ejected by the nose guns kept hitting it, so the pod was moved under the wing, outboard of the right engine. Further P-38J radar conversions followed, some of them piggy-back two-seaters, for the 481st Night Fighter Operational Training Group, which ran the field trials.
The Night Lightning
Building on that experience, the Army Air Forces contracted Lockheed in late 1944 (October, according to History of War) to turn a P-38L into a dedicated night fighter. The radar operator sat in a second cockpit behind and slightly above the pilot, under its own canopy extending the main one, which let him see over the pilot's head; headroom was so limited that short operators were preferred. The radar, the AN/APS-6 in most sources (History of War says AN/APS-4), sat in a long pod under the nose, ahead of the nosewheel doors. The aircraft was painted flat black and given conical flash hiders on the gun muzzles. Power came from the two turbo-supercharged Allison V-1710-111/113 engines.
Sources disagree on the first flight. History of War dates it to 5 January 1945, while ModelPlanes.de says the first flight with every modification in place was made in February 1945. That prototype flew only six times before it was destroyed, yet the Army Air Forces still ordered 75 similar P-38L conversions, designated P-38M Night Lightning. The figure of 75 comes from the English, German and French Wikipedia; a modeller who researched the 418th Squadron's history puts the number of conversions at about 80. The external additions cost surprisingly little performance: the P-38M was faster than the P-61, by more than 30 mph over the P-61A according to the Museum of Flight, and performed better overall than the P-61B, although it suffered from some operational limitations. It was among the first radar-equipped American fighters.
Too late for the war
Testing of the first production P-38M began in July 1945, and five aircraft reached a training establishment at Hammer Field, California, the same month. Training crews on the new type delayed its deployment. What followed is disputed: several Wikipedia editions and ModelPlanes.de say the Night Lightning flew some combat duty in the Pacific towards the end of the war without ever engaging an enemy, whereas History of War holds that it did not enter active service until the fighting was over.
Occupied Japan
The best-documented posting of the P-38M was the occupation of Japan. Early in 1946 the 418th Night Fighter Squadron, based at Atsugi south-west of Tokyo, received four P-38Ms converted from P-38Ls in the Philippines. When the squadron moved back to Okinawa in early March, the Night Lightnings stayed in Japan and went to the 421st Night Fighter Squadron at Itazuke, on Kyushu, while most of the unit's P-61s were let go. Among the most frequently depicted airframes is 44-27234, a former P-38L converted to P-38M standard.
After the war
The P-38M's most striking episode came in 1954. The CIA's Liberation Air Force flew one P-38M in support of the Guatemalan coup d'etat, and on 27 June 1954 that aircraft dropped napalm bombs that destroyed the British cargo ship Springfjord at Puerto San José while it was loading Guatemalan cotton and coffee. Another example, 44-53097, now displayed by the Museum of Flight in Seattle, was one of the last Lightnings built: completed as a P-38L, it was converted to a P-38M for delivery to the Army Air Forces, served with the Honduran Air Force in the 1950s and passed through several private owners before Doug Champlin bought it in 1983 and had it returned to single-seat P-38L configuration.