What name did Lockheed want to give the P-38 before "Lightning" prevailed?

Lockheed had a long-standing habit of naming its aircraft after mythological and celestial figures, and for its new twin-engine fighter it chose Atalanta, the Greek goddess famous for her speed as a runner. It was a fitting name for what the aircraft promised to deliver: the P-38 was the first military aircraft to exceed 400 mph (640 km/h) in level flight, and its XP-38 prototype had made its first flight on January 27, 1939, piloted by Ben Kelsey.

The aircraft's definitive name arrived by way of an export order. After the fall of France in June 1940, the British took over the entire outstanding order and gave the aircraft the service name "Lightning." Those export aircraft had one particular quirk: the overseas allies wanted their Allison engines to be fully interchangeable with those of the numerous Curtiss P-40 Tomahawks they had also ordered, so they specifically requested two engines that both rotated in the same direction, with no counter-rotation, and without turbosuperchargers. In the end, it was this British name that stuck, rather than Lockheed's original choice of Atalanta.

The name remained permanently tied to an aircraft that was produced on a large scale throughout the entire American involvement in the war. Decades later, Lockheed Martin's F-35 was given the operational name Lightning II as a direct tribute to the P-38. Its wartime enemies, for their part, gave it other nicknames entirely: the Germans called it the Gabelschwanz Teufel ("fork-tailed devil"), while in the Pacific the Japanese referred to it as "two planes, one pilot."