Lockheed P 38 Lightning - El diablo de dos colas

Video from the channel Mundo de Aviación about Lockheed P-38 Lightning, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 12:11. Language: Spanish. Video type: Documentary.

A look back at the history of the Lockheed P-38 Lightning, the twin-boom, twin-engine fighter the Luftwaffe nicknamed "the fork-tailed devil." It was the only American fighter that remained in production throughout the United States' entire involvement in World War II.

In February 1937, the Army Air Corps requested a twin-engine, high-altitude interceptor with turbocharged Allison V-1710 engines and tricycle landing gear. The XP-38 prototype flew on 27 January 1939 and was followed by 13 YP-38 pre-production aircraft. Tail instability in dives, which cost a test pilot his life, was solved in 1943 with recovery flaps, incorporated at the factory from June 1944. It served in North Africa, Europe and the Aleutians, and above all in the Pacific, where it was credited with shooting down more Japanese aircraft than any other American fighter.

It carried four 12.7 mm machine guns and a 20 mm cannon in the nose, reached 666 km/h and had a combat range of 2,100 km on internal fuel. On 18 April 1943, 16 P-38Gs intercepted Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto. Richard Bong scored 40 victories in the P-38 and Thomas McGuire 38. The USAAF retired it in 1949; Italy received 100 P-38Ls. Today 26 examples survive, of which 10 are airworthy.