the Red Bull P-38

https://www.facebook.com/aircorpsaviation/posts/pfbid0L68YPqCH7q3BXaquFiTAAo1nj3bo5AH17iuSrvEXZdmxYMSMM8AiAGCvV7yqQVMHl

P 38 nose art made from a Earl Macpherson pin up, Wishful Thinking

The original was known as Seasons Greetings

https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=8857468671003611&set=gm.10161216835264472&idorvanity=14020804471

I doubt anyone's seen this before... it's both amazing, and about a 18 inch wave away from swamping the DUKWs

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=873709995169844&set=a.187788823761968

P38 restored and has the coolest small details... like the plugs on the engine cowling matching the nose art, and the red white and blue on the prop cone

https://vintageaviationnews.com/warbirds-news/p-38j-lightning-jandina-iii-arrives-at-fhcam.html

there's a digital collection of 1920-1945 military aircraft you might want to look through

it's got a lot to look through

check out the score board and mission symbols on this P38! Thank you Capt Doug!

https://www.forcbodiesonly.com/mopar-forum/threads/nose-art.60295/page-3

Betty White's 1st husband was a P38 pilot in WW2

 https://fox8.com/news/i-couldnt-hack-it-betty-whites-first-marriage-led-her-to-brief-bumpy-ride-in-ohio-town

There's nothing much to say about that 8 month marriage, but damn... the most beautiful women marry pilots, always have. 

it's arguable that the most famous aircraft from World War II was the Memphis Bell, or, the Enola Gay. But have you heard of Marge, the P38? I haven't. Have you heard of Richard Bong? I haven't. But, he's America’s top flying ace

Bong was a deft pilot who seized the P-38’s monster weaponry to claim his first two aerial kills in December 1942 over Buna, New Guinea. At five aerial victories a month later, he earned the title “ace.”

In April 1944, he exceeded the 26 aerial kills claimed by America’s top World War I ace, Edward Rickenbacker, making Bong the highest scoring ace in U.S. history, a title still standing. 

During a rescue mission in New Guinea, Bong was flying overhead while three fellow pilots took a small rubber boat across a lake to reach a pilot who had been missing in the jungle. As he circled above, Bong noticed a crocodile trailing close behind his comrades in the boat. Dropping his plane low to glide along the water, Bong hit the crocodile with a 20 mm round, blasting away the animal and saving his crew, earning himself a story typically only found in legends.

Along the way he was awarded the Silver Star, Distinguished Service Cross and Medal of Honor. 

I wondered about the art of his wife, as it's really out of the question that anyone was talented enough to paint that, and Joe (Thank you Joe!) sent me a couple links today, and one explained that it's a blown up picture from her graduation photo, and he glued it onto his plane. For more about her life story, see https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2003-oct-10-me-drucker10-story.html

On March 24, 1944, another pilot, 2nd Lt. Tom Malone, was flying Bong’s plane on a weather reconnaissance mission over New Guinea when electrical malfunctions forced him to bail out at about 11,000 feet. The plane crashed, and it's location are unknown, so, the search will begin soon to find it. 

 Bong, who was promoted to major, went on to fly more missions in other planes, racking up 40 aerial victories before he was brought back to the U.S. mainland in early 1945. There, he married, hawked war bonds and became a test pilot for the first jet fighters. 

Bong’s untimely death later that year should have been major news, but it was eclipsed by a cataclysmic event. He crashed while flying a P-80 Shooting Star jet fighter shortly after taking off in Southern California on Aug. 6, 1945, the same day America dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/lightning72/4032910500/

https://www.stripes.com/theaters/asia_pacific/2024-04-11/richard-bong-marge-wreckage-ww2-13535214.html

https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/richard-bong-medal-of-honor

https://bongcenter.org/

Sharon was only seven years old when she promised to find her missing father, a P38 fighter pilot during WWII in the 428th, shot down over Germany a month before the war was over, on his last mission needed to transfer back to the states, only three weeks after she was born

There was no closure for the Estills after WW2. There was no information other than 'MIA' about whether 1st Lt. Shannon Estill was KIA or buried in a European cemetery. He had taken off with 10 other fighter pilots on April 13, 1945, to attack a railway station and destroy Nazi supply lines, when they ran into enemy anti-aircraft fire 

The letters the 22-year-old pilot had exchanged with his wife since they were high school sweethearts stopped coming. Sharon’s father was deemed unaccounted for and eventually listed as killed in action, despite his body not being recovered.

Now a 77-year-old author and retired professor, propelled by clues she pieced together from her parents’ wartime letters—along with help from military historians, eyewitnesses, and an excavation team—Taylor concluded a multi-decade mission to recover her father’s remains and bring him home in 2006. 

In the 1990s, with her own children grown, Taylor spent a summer transcribing the letters, getting to know her father through the resulting 3,000 typed pages, transcribed from the 450 handwritten correspondence letters  from her parents, spanning from their high school courtship to Estill’s pilot training to his deployment in the fall of 1944.

She found a reference to a possible crash site near the town of Elsnig in eastern Germany.

With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, it had become possible for Taylor to visit the potential crash site, territory the Soviet Union had long controlled. She connected with German military aviation historian Hans-Guenther Ploes, who agreed to help her try to find and identify any aircraft and human remains.

In 2003 Ploes discovered the data plate from Estill’s downed plane, along with bone fragments nearby. The predecessor of the Department of Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) sent a recovery team from the United States.

Now, through an immersive sound and light show premiering at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans this Veterans Day, she’s bringing her parents’ experience, and a larger story of war casualties and their families, to new generations.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/world-war-ii-love-letters-help-a-daughter-find-her-missing-father

possibly the 1st hot rod belly tank in Italy or Corsica in WW2, a year or two before Bill Burke's on the So Cal dry lakes. A ground crewman from the USAAF 1st Fighter Group poses with his makeshift car craftily built from a P-38’s 150-165 gallon external fuel tank

https://www.facebook.com/TheTruthInColor/posts/1961398213897945

https://www.jalopyjournal.com/?p=39829

Lockheed P 38 Lightning in 1947 (currently shiny aluminum and owned by Red Bull) in the 1947 Thompson Trophy Race

Constructed as a P-38L-5-LO by Lockheed at Burbank, California, USA. Circa July 1945

 Taken on Strength/Charge with the United States Army Air Force with s/n 44-53254.

1945 Converted to a F-5G-6-LO.

October 1945 Transferred to War Assets Administration, Kingman Army Airfield, AZ.

20 February 1946 Transferred to Reconstruction Finance Corporation, Kingman AAF, AZ.

April 1946

Sold to Lilee Products, Chicago, IL with c/r N25Y. Purchased by Lilee for $1,500.

From September 1946 to 1953 To J. D. Reed Co, Houston, TX.

http://www.aerialvisuals.ca/AirframeDossier.php?Serial=8817

In September 1945, the P-38 F-5G-6-LO with serial number 44-53254 was surplussed from the Air Force and registered as civil aircraft N25Y by the Lilee Products Co. in Chicago, Illinois who owned the plane for a time, however the story of this plane becomes much more interesting when it was sold to J.D. Reed of Houston, Texas.

 J.D. Reed was an air racing enthusiast who was successful in recruiting equally passionate pilots, including Charlie “Firewall” Walling. At the same time, Reed worked to further enhance the speed of the plane with a modified carburetor cover to allow additional water injection and the addition of aerodynamically designed propellers and wing tips. His enthusiasm and fine-tuning paid off and Walling achieved 2nd place at the 1947 Miami Air Races – and at the Sohio-Race in Cleveland in the same year.

This P-38 was raced in this paint scheme in early 1947 and with this nose configuration. It was repainted and modified in mid-1947and became the fastest P-38 in history.Flown by Charlie “Firewall” Walling,it hit 440MPH on the straights at low level.

http://warbirdsnews.com/warbirds-news/fun-facts/red-bulls-lockheed-p-38-lightning-1948.html

One more P-38 has been located buried in ice on Greenland.

The expedition, led by Jim Salazar and Ken McBride from Arctic Hotpoint Solutions and Fallen American MIA Repatriation Foundation (FAMIARF), just returned from Greenland’s Ice Cap having reached all set targets with success. The targets were to locate P-38 “Echo” dogfighter from Lost Squadron and to test new Drone/GPR research technology to locate airplanes buried under 300 feet or more of ice.

The team worked in two groups – the UAV group started the research with the new technology – a Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) and drone integrated system to locate the P-38. The acquired data showed anomalies at a depth of around 300 feet.

UAV radar’s contact was confirmed by the ground surveying group. The distance between determined locations of both groups was 10ft.

The Lightning is one from the same group of six P-38’s and two B-17s which got stranded on the ice in Greenland during a WWII ferry operation. As most readers will be aware, a previous team recovered one of these P-38s back in the late 80s, and restored her to flight. We all know that aircraft as Glacier Girl now.

They'll try and get the ice melted and pull it out next year.

https://www.popularmechanics.com/flight/a22575917/wwii-p-38-discovered-under-300-feet-of-ice-in-greenland/
https://www.uasvision.com/2018/07/27/drone-locates-lost-p-38-squadron-in-greenland/

How to fly the P-38 by Lockheed, your coffee and donuts video for the morning

Thanks Maurice!

Tin Tin and Snowy's guide to WW2 aircraft, 17 selected pieces from a gallery of 5 dozen

A series of drawings of planes during the Second World War, made in the 50s by the artist Hergé (real name - Georges Prosper Remi, known as the author of the comic book "The Adventures of Tintin")

if you want to know what plane it is, and few are not well known, go to the link at the bottom of this gallery, each plane is labeled there. I figure most of you already know them all, I've posted so many WW2 planes in the last 2 years.

For the full gallery http://feldgrau.info/engines/13154-spravochnik-risunki-samoletov