Caiden - Fork-Tailed Devil; The P-38 Lightning

FORK-TAILED

DEVIL:

THE P-38

M A R T I N C A I D I N

Martin Caidin was the author of over fifty books and more than a thousand magazine articles and was recognized as one of the outstanding aeronautics and aviation authorities in the world. The National War College, the Air Forces Air University and several other institutions use his books as doctrine and strategy guides, historical references and textbooks. He twice won the Aviation/Space Writers Association award as the outstanding author in the field of aviation. Caidin died in March 1997.

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FORK-TAILED

DEVIL:

THE P-38

M A R T I N C A I D I N

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Martin Caidin

Fork Tailed Devil: The P-38

ISBN-13: 978-1-87696-328-6, Trade Paper

Library of Congress Control Number available

I. Nonfiction Military History, World War II. II. Aviation, World War II, United States

Copyright 1971, 2001 by Martin Caidin

Introduction 2001 by David Ballantine

May 2012

First ibooks, inc. printing June 2001

Cover art by Bob Larkin

Cover design by Mike Rivilis

This book is for

Joe Wesley Dickerson

Arthur W. Heiden

Edward B. Giller

F. Val Phillips

Charles W. King

Tony LeVier

Milo Burcham

Bill Coleman

Revis Sirmon

and

Hey! The roll; call the roll!

Those who flew the Lightning...

Those gone.

Those still here...

Contents

Introduction

Designed strictly as a bomber escort, the P-38 took on and accomplished all the orders later assigned to it. Pursuit, fighter, bomber, and ground attack were all within its powers.

The records and the heroism are everywhere in the text.

Not only are the P-38s technical details described but on a first hand basis the reader meets with the men who made this aircraft great, from top aces Dick Bong and Tommy McGuire to pilots who became aces on their first mission.

Though ultimately its record would establish it as a great combat aircraft, initially the P-38s record with pilots, especially in the European Theater of Operations, was poor.

Pilot resistance to the planes faults, both real and imagined, caused Lockheed to send their great test pilot Tony LeVier to tour the English airfields. He answered the hard life-and-death questions the combat pilots had and, backing up his words with deeds, put on demonstration flights that were akin to a violin virtuosos performance on a Stradivarius. But LeViers work would have been for naught had there not been incidents like the one Lt. Hurbert B. Hatch experienced. While on a mission over Germany, he looked up to see FW 190s coming down from the sky around him like rain drops driven by a cloudburst.

A pilot brand new to combat, he shot his way out of the storm of enemy fighters, downing five to become an ace in one mission.

Eventually the P-38 would be phased out of the European theater. In the Pacific Theater of Operations, however, the Lightning stayed very active. One of the greatest tests of its capabilities took place in mid-April of 1943 when Allied intelligence discovered that Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto was going to visit Kahili on the coast of Bougainville. A P-38 intercept was planned. Its time of arrival had to be absolutely perfect and after a complex 435 mile wave-top approach that avoided all Japanese observers the Lightnings were there. Eighteen P-38s were assigned to get Yamamoto" and that is exactly what happened.

Great adventure, bravery, and a triumphant American fighting plane, that was the P-38 at war. I wont even mention the two best stories in the book. Yes, there are two amazing ones and they are true, however no sign posts.

The reader deserves to find both of these on his own.

David Ballantine

New York

2001

CHAPTER 1

TWILIGHT ZONE

WE STOOD IN A group beneath the four heavy machine guns and cannon clustered wickedly in the nose of the big fighter. To each side of the gleaming waxed surface shone a spinner and silvery propeller blades. From nose to tail the airplane glistened with the beauty only repeated hand waxing can impart to a winged machine. Colonel Revis Sirmon of the Confederate Air Force climbed into the cockpit. He strapped in, went through the checklist, looked out for the hand signal the props were clear. Sirmon hit the starter for the left engine.

Never did a husky Allison turn over smoother or faster, never did one of those big engines purr more softly, a deep-throated growling rumble that astonished everyone with its low beat. Then the other set of blades whirled in the bright sun, the second engine rumbled with the same authoritative manner, and the machine was alive, dipping ever so gently on the nose strut as the power tried to ease her forward. There was an air of disbelief about it all. You had the feeling of standing somewhere in the Twilight Zone, the years stripped away like pages of a book turned back-ward, because this was the summer of 1968 and that beautiful winged creature trembling with restrained power was a twin-engine fighter of a war, an era of flight, long past.

In the midst of history, we stood on the flight line of the Confederate Air Force. The sun weighed on the concrete of Rebel Field with a heavy hand. Harlingen, Texas lies at the very bottom of the United States, and it is the heat of Mexico and Texas, turning shirts and hair wet with perspiration. The big fighter before us rumbled with power, and I took the moment to scan the flight line. Beyond the Lightning waiting for flight, still parked near the edge of the runway, was the big Flying Fortress I had just landed after an hour of touch-and-go landings. And that , without power-boosted controls, guarantees a flight suit soaked from head to foot.

To the left of the B-17G, lined in a row before the main hangar, wing to wing, stood a Consolidated B-24J Liberator, the four-engined counterpart of the Fortress from the days of World War II. Its immediate companion was a true rarity, perhaps the only one of its kind still flying in the world, the Martin B-26 Marauder, the twin-engined medium bomber once infamous as Martins Miscarriage, or the Incredible Prostitute (the wings in the early models were so short the airplane had no visible means of support, cried its pilots). There was a Douglas A-26 Invader, the flat-bellied medium bomber transformed by the magic of postwar designation shuffling into the B-26; the change marked the loss from Air Force inventory of the Marauder, and the A-26 took up its new number. Further along the row of historical holdouts was a Beech C-45 Expeditor, the famed ship known world over as the D-18, or simply the Twin Beech. There was a venerable Gooney Bird, the Douglas C-47 Skytrain, courtesy of the original DC-3. Further down the line stood an ugly intruder, a Fairchild C-119 Packet with huge engines and booms. With the Packet there was a Boeing B-47E Stratojet and a Northrop F-89 Scorpion. These, however, were of the postwar breed and were more tolerated than appreciated by the pilots and ground crews of the Confederate Air Force fiercely loyal to the winged machines of the Second World War.

Behind us and to our right spread an air buffs wildest dream come true. Another Lockheed Lightning, this one a P-38H model rather than the husky P-38L ticking over before flight. Parked neatly in their slots could be seen a group of fighters fairly reeking with historybut every one of them in top flying condition. A Curtis P-40F Warhawk in dazzling blood-red hue from nose to tail. A huge, deep-bellied Republic P-47D Thunderbolt, one of six being resurrected at the time. Two sleek North American P-51D