Picture of the day

x westie said:
Isoroku Yamamoto ,,Admiral of the Imperial Japanese Navy was flying in a Mitsubishi G4M “ Betty “ bomber when he was ambushed and shot down on Bougainville Island ,Papua New Guinea , (Operation Vengeance), April 18 1943, by US Army Airforce P38 fighters , who flew a 1000 mile flight , 600 miles to the intercept ,avoiding radar and Japanese personnel stationed in the Solomon Islands , 400 miles return flight
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The P-38 is a good example of an aircraft that was perfect... In the right kind of fight. Did great over the Pacific - long range, great firepower. Extra engine to get you back to base instead of becoming shark food if you ditched. #### Bong racked up a heluva total with one during the Pacific campaign.

But... It was unloved over Europe. The Germans feared and respected it, but it just didn't mesh with the fighting style of the Allies over the continent.
 
grelmar said:
The P-38 is a good example of an aircraft that was perfect... In the right kind of fight. Did great over the Pacific - long range, great firepower. Extra engine to get you back to base instead of becoming shark food if you ditched. #### Bong racked up a heluva total with one during the Pacific campaign.

But... It was unloved over Europe. The Germans feared and respected it, but it just didn't mesh with the fighting style of the Allies over the continent.
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https://www.historynet.com/p-38-flu...roze, sometimes causing catastrophic failures.
 
grelmar said:
The P-38 is a good example of an aircraft that was perfect... In the right kind of fight. Did great over the Pacific - long range, great firepower. Extra engine to get you back to base instead of becoming shark food if you ditched. #### Bong racked up a heluva total with one during the Pacific campaign.

But... It was unloved over Europe. The Germans feared and respected it, but it just didn't mesh with the fighting style of the Allies over the continent.
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Lots of problems with the P 38 in Europe, a very high tech aircraft that pilots took time to be proficient, cold cockpits that a pilot pretty much froze in, engine problems
 
diopter said:
https://www.historynet.com/p-38-flu...roze, sometimes causing catastrophic failures.
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x westie said:
Lots of problems with the P 38 in Europe, a very high tech aircraft that pilots took time to be proficient, cold cockpits that a pilot pretty much froze in, engine problems
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Young pilots with limited training, flying high altitude bomber escort missions in the cold, against skilled veterans in the Luftwaffe flying highly capable aircraft... It didn't work out.

The Pacific was a different kind of air war. Warm weather, flying closer to the deck (rarely needing oxygen) doing fleet protection, against an opponent that had used up its experience pilots, flying aircraft that badly needed an update for the changing war... The P-38, with all that firepower pointing out the nose (no need to worry about converging aimpoints of wing-mounted guns)... It was in its element.

I suspect the J model would have come into its own in Europe, but by the time it was available in numbers, the 8th Air Force pilots had already lost faith in the platform. With the new, easier to learn, fast and effective single engine fighters now coming over in numbers, it wasn't a hard choice for the 8th Air Force to make.
 
grelmar said:
I suspect the J model would have come into its own in Europe, but by the time it was available in numbers, the 8th Air Force pilots had already lost faith in the platform. With the new, easier to learn, fast and effective single engine fighters now coming over in numbers, it wasn't a hard choice for the 8th Air Force to make.
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Plus it simplified logistics to send all of one thing to Europe and all of another thing to the Pacific theater.
 
old303 said:
Plus it simplified logistics to send all of one thing to Europe and all of another thing to the Pacific theater.
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Let's face it, fighting distances in the Pacific were much greater and it took aircraft like the P38 to deal with that, thinking of the raid that killed Yamamoto specifically.

Grizz
 
In all honesty, the P-38 should have been ditched entirely once it was discovered the P-51 was superior in almost every aspect, and resources re-distributed to making P-51s or Merlins under licence.

The fact remains that the U.S. had such a capacity for production, they could afford to fulfil the contracts signed to Lockheed, and keep paying GM to making their vastly inferior Allison -1710s.
 
No airplane is perfect. P51 showed itself to be way too vulnerable to groundfire. It was taken out of service for close air support and not fast enough to tackle Migs.
 
grelmar said:
The P-38 is a good example of an aircraft that was perfect... In the right kind of fight. Did great over the Pacific - long range, great firepower. Extra engine to get you back to base instead of becoming shark food if you ditched. #### Bong racked up a heluva total with one during the Pacific campaign.

But... It was unloved over Europe. The Germans feared and respected it, but it just didn't mesh with the fighting style of the Allies over the continent.
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When I was a young fellow I knew a former Luftwaffe Me-109 pilot who was shot down by a P-38 in N.Africa. He considered himself very lucky to have gotten out unscathed.
 
A little Portuguese military humor.
279031631-2544058432398234-3425246580292802165-n.jpg

"Oh Albert! Ever since you've been assigned to copcon, you've been unbearable, with that mania for looking for hidden weapons everywhere..."
 
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In July 1977 geomorphologist Peter Johnson stumbled across an old weather station in northern Labrador. It turned out to be an automatic station that had been set up secretly by a German submarine crew in 1943 so that Germany might have notice of impending weather systems. The Allies had never discovered it and it had stood unregarded for 30 years after the war’s end.
“Weather Station Kurt” was probably designed to operate automatically for about six months, transmitting readings on temperature, wind direction, strength, and humidity every three hours until its batteries failed in the cold.
All the witnesses to its installation died when the submarine, U-537, was sunk in the Java Sea. Their work marks the only known armed German military operation on land in North America during World War II.
The station is now on display at the Canadian War Museum.
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