Another interesting Aviation story by Andrew King, always with links to my hometown. To think there could still be parts of a P-38 Lightning scattered about McGregor lake. Just as interesting is the ‘career path’ of these Warbirds – from delivery to the USAF, to surplus-ed Air Racers and finally to Air Survey work.
A quest to find the wreckage of a crashed WW2 P-38 Lightning in the woods north of Ottawa…
During World War Two the German Luftwaffe nicknamed it der Gabelschwanz-Teufel, or “ the fork-tailed devil”. The American built Lockheed P-38 Lightning was aptly nick-named due to its distinctive twin-engine booms and central pilot pod paired with exceptional flight characteristics. The P-38 was a formidable opponent for the Luftwaffe in Europe and for the Japanese in the Pacific, who referred to it as “two planes, one pilot”.
Developed as a twin engined high altitude interceptor to attack hostile aircraft, the P-38 entered service in 1942 and remained in operation with the United States Air Force until 1949. After the war, thousands of P-38 Lightnings became obsolete aircraft as the aviation world entered the jet age. These surplus P-38s were sold off into a variety of new roles including foreign air forces…
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