Lockheed P-38 Lightning - A Short History (US Air Force Aircraft History)

Video from the channel A Short History about Lockheed P-38 Lightning, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 4:34. Language: English. Video type: Documentary.

Short history of the Lockheed P-38 Lightning. In February 1937, the US Army Air Corps issued proposal X-608 for a twin-engine, high-altitude interceptor. Lockheed won it with its Model 22, and the XP-38 prototype flew on 27 January 1939. After it was destroyed in a record flight between California and New York, 13 YP-38s were ordered. Compressibility problems in dives were solved in 1943 with quick-acting dive flaps.

It entered service in April 1942 and fought in the Aleutians, the North Atlantic, the Mediterranean and Europe, where through 1944 it was largely replaced by the P-51.

In the Pacific it shot down more than 1,800 Japanese aircraft. More than 10,000 were built, and the United States retired it from service in 1949.