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The P-38 Lightning in Europe

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The P-38 Lightning in Europe Buy Now! Home The P-38 Lightning in Europe By Jonathan Lupton With one engine out and a propeller feathered, a P-38 flies home protected by heavily-armed B-17s. Background he P-38 Lightning was short, it’s almost always described as assumption—that bombers could one of the world’s fastest having been overshadowed by the protect themselves against enemy T aircraft when it first flew P-51 Mustang, a fighter that proved fighter interceptors—wasn’t working. early in 1939. Its eccentric design was to be an ideal long-range escort. immediately seen as exciting rather It would be wrong, though, to Strategic Dilemma than off-putting: its airframe featured simply downplay the P-38. They twin “booms” and a cockpit “pod” provided the bulk of long-range escort Prior to the war the US Army Air Air Corps doctrine further boxes,” could defeat German intercep- P-47 Thunderbolt fighters helped, but in place of a traditional fuselage. fighters during the critical operations Corps (the USAAF’s prewar organi- mandated bombers alone would tor attacks. By the late summer of 1943, they couldn’t escort the bombers all The Lightning was, in fact, one of of January through March 1944, the zational predecessor) had developed dominate future air war. Its leaders that view was clearly out of date. the way to targets deep in Germany. the US Army Air Force’s (USAAF) most decisive period during which the the strategic doctrine of “daylight shared the view of most air com- In fact, as early as 1940 the Battle The USAAF therefore began experi- important aircraft during the war. USAAF gained full ascendancy over precision bombing.” Air Corps thinkers mands at the time: fighters would of Britain had shown that fighters, menting with “drop tanks’” to extend Its combination of speed, fast rate of the Luftwaffe. For example, during believed the long-range heavy bomber be secondary, serving mainly the assisted by radar and ground intel- the range of its P-47 fighter escorts. climb, heavy armament, long range “Big Week” (20-26 February 1944) to be the supreme weapon of future political necessity of providing ligence and control networks, could By the second Schweinfurt Raid in and good cockpit visibility made it two of four long-range fighter groups war. The B-17, first flown in 1935, was token protection for the homeland dependably generate unacceptable October 1943, P-47s could accompany at least somewhat successful in all serving Eighth Air Force, based in developed to operationalize that idea. against enemy bombers, while the losses to bombers attacking in day- the bombers slightly past the German its roles. There was one campaign, England, and all three long-range Heavily armed, structurally robust, true path to victory via airpower lay light. Even with limited fighter escort, border. That helped, but German however, in which—according to fighter groups with Fifteenth Air faster than most of its contemporaries, only in sending your bomber fleet to the Luftwaffe had been unable to over- fighters just hung back until the escorts the conventional narrative—the Force, based in Italy, were P-38 units. and bombing from altitudes in excess annihilate the opposition’s homeland come the Royal Air Force’s (RAF) coor- turned away. The USAAF therefore P-38 failed: escorting US bombers in To understand the P-38’s true of 30,000 feet, the B-17 would indeed before he could do so to yours. dinated defense system. Similarly, by still needed long-range fighters to Operation Pointblank, the daylight significance during that crucial period, prove an effective instrument for As the air war developed, the the summer of 1943, even the USAAF’s accompany the bombers the whole strategic bombing campaign against it’s therefore necessary to understand daylight bombing. The newer B-24, USAAF high command stubbornly most doctrinaire strategic bombing distance to targets deep in Germany. Germany. Many historical accounts the overall strategic bombing with the same heavy armament, longer adhered to the view its bombers’ fire- advocates understood Luftwaffe In a series of raids deep into are dismissive of the Lightning and campaign. Lightnings were brought range and even heavier bomb load, power, when combined with massed fighters were bringing down too many Germany from 4 through 14 October its service in that costly effort. In in because the campaign’s founding was also built for the same mission. formation flying in tight “combat bombers. Short-range Spitfire and 1943, Eighth Air Force lost 160 bomb- 50 WORLD at WAR 30 | JUN–JUL 2013 WORLD at WAR 30 | JUN–JUL 2013 51 Lockheed P38-J Lightning Strengths & Weaknesses of an Unorthodox Fighter Nothing was average about the P-38 Lightning. It was a successful twin-engine day fighter in a war in which single-engine fighters predominated. It introduced tricycle landing gear, clear-glass “bubble” canopies, and could outrange any single-engine fighter during the early war years. Its twin-boom layout was unusual though not unique. When the Lightning first flew in 1939, its 400 mph maximum speed seemed like something out of science fiction. Its performance dropped off with altitude, though it remained one of the fastest fighters through the mid-war period. Other US fighters had wing-mounted machineguns that had to be synchronized to converge their fire at specific ranges. The Lightning was more heavily armed, with a 20mm cannon and four machineguns, all mounted in the nose for straight shooting. With a 52-foot wingspan and its twin-engine configuration, the P-38 wasn’t B-17s flying in combat box formations for mutual protection. as nimble in dogfights as some single-engine fighters. Its ability to roll was particularly inferior to that of single-engine planes. Yet it held advantages beyond ers. The most memorable raid of that good speed and rate of climb. For instance, because its counter-rotating propellers period, a strike at the Schweinfurt ball neutralized torque, the P-38 had good turning ability, especially at low speed. bearing works, beyond the range of War Emergency Power & For those reasons, the Lightning could be a dangerous opponent. P-47 protection, cost 60 bombers—20 Allison Time-Bombs Luftwaffe fighter pilots who flew against it in the winter of 1943-44, includ- percent of the attack force. Those ing aces Gunther Rall and Heinz Knoke, never disparaged the P-38. disastrous losses generated a more When P-38s began escorting bombers over northern Europe, seri- The Lightning’s most crucial limitation was in high-speed dives. The problem was determined push toward finding an ous problems cropped up. Engines would give out, sometimes deto- not a lack of speed, but rather an excess of it. That is, when pushed into a dive over escort fighter solution. Two already nating or throwing piston rods in flight. Pilots were understandably 375 mph, the Lightning tended to quickly gain great speed, pushing the airflow over existing aircraft types showed potential enraged when their engines went dead, sometimes in the middle of parts of its frame to near supersonic velocity. That caused a form of turbulence known for the role: the Lockheed P-38 combat. The P-38 engines acquired the unflattering nickname “Allison as “compressibility,” which could lock the controls and then shake apart the plane. Lightning and the North American time -bombs.” (Allison being the company that manufactured them.) In air combat that meant P-38 pilots had to avoid extreme dives. One of the German P-51B Mustang. Accordingly, on 29 There were several contributing factors. The high altitude required fighters’ favorite tactics was to make head-on attacks against the bombers, followed by October, Gen. Henry Harley “Hap” to escort the bombers—up to 35,000 feet—combined with the tight rolls and high-speed dive aways. The Lightnings couldn’t follow. The diving problem Arnold, head of the USAAF, ordered all extremely cold skies of northern European winter, put stress on the also deprived Lightning pilots of their own otherwise useful escape maneuver. The problem production of those two planes sent engines not previously encountered. Inexperienced pilots and ground was eventually solved in later models, but the versions available in 1943 and early 1944, to Eighth Air Force, despite pressing crews knew little of the procedures necessary to get reliable perfor- the P-38H and early versions of the P-38J, simply had to avoid high-speed dives. needs for them in other theaters. mance from them under such conditions. In turn, some of the informa- A P-38 engine. Note the tight fit. One of the Lightning’s most serious limitations is little mentioned in most Neither of those planes had been tion officially provided for dealing with the situation proved wrong. accounts: cost. The Lightning was a high-tech aircraft that didn’t lend itself well designed to serve as long-range Much of the problem stemmed from the P-38’s still rigorous maintenance after each use of WEP, the mechani- to mass production. Despite efforts to improve production efficiency, Lightnings bomber escorts. The P-38 was ongoing development process. During the winter of 1943-44 cal lifetime of the plane wasn’t drastically reduced. cost more and took longer to make than Mustangs and Thunderbolts. ★ originally developed as an interceptor, the G and H models were supplanted by the more powerful J. The J and later versions could be distinguished from while the P-51 had an even more That was a change for the better, but it created vexing new earlier Lightnings by their deeper nacelles, which housed a off-center history: it had initially problems.
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