![]() “It looked like a beautiful monster.” “If you were a boy in America, you wanted to fly it,” said another future ace, Winton “Bones” Marshall. “We were in awe of the P-38,” said future ace Jack Ilfrey. So what happened in northern Europe, and how could things have gone so wrong? ‘BEAUTIFUL MONSTER’Ī survey of Stateside training bases in 1941 showed that 87 percent of prospective pilots requested to be assigned to the big, sleek, twin-engine Lockheed Lightning. It was, Olds hastened to add, “the most beautiful plane of our generation.” And it fought well in the Mediterranean and the Pacific. Our enemies had difficulty defeating the P-38 but, as much as we gloried in it, we were defeating ourselves with this airplane.” “The fact is, the P-38 Lightning was too much airplane for a new kid and a full-time job for even a mature and experienced fighter pilot. “I loved the P-38 but I got those kills in spite of the airplane, not because of it,” Olds recalled. It was August 14, 1944, and Olds had just used his P-38 Lightning to rack up the first two of his eventual 13 World War II aerial victories. ![]() ![]() Olds shot down one of the Fw-190s moments later, then followed the second into a violent left break, fired and watched the pilot bail out. Until that instant, he hadn’t been certain the planes were German. This Plane Made all the Difference in Vietnam - So Did its AviatorsĬaptain Robin Olds kicked left rudder, slid his pipper across the nearest plane’s left wing and, in an instant of epiphany, saw the Iron Cross painted on the rear fuselage. ![]()
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