A local WWII museum hosted a wonderful display this weekend... the Warhawk Air Museum was very proud to welcome one of the THREE flying P-38s in the world.. flown by Steve Hinton, of the Planes of Fame Museum in Chino, CA. The fly-bys also had a T-28, a P-51 and the Warhawk's own P-40. There was a crowd of approximately 1400 people... with many old veterans who were pretty misty-eyed.
Two former P-38 pilots who flew combat missions in Europe spoke for over an hour.. what stories.... they were a hoot. They talked about the dogfights, the strafing runs (trains were a favorite, until the Germans caught on and devised "fake" boxcars whose sides flopped down to reveal omni-directional guns...).. oh it went on and on. One of these men survived a mid-air with his wingman when the wing passed out from an O2 system failure (they deduced later)... he said he saw him pitch up steeply, roll hard left (over his head!), hit his left wingtip, and then descend in a steep dive.... Our speaker-pilot turned for home and one of the other P-38s stayed off his wing.. he said he was visibly missing the outer and aft parts of the left wing, and wasn't sure of the tail.. he said he had aircraft control until he got down to around 145 knots, so made his approach at 150... and he did manage to stop and got out okay... only to see the entire airfield staring with mouths agape at the shreeded airplane he had just landed... and he said it flew amazingly well.... He assumed the pilot who had passed out was killed, but was surprised to learn some time later, the guy had come to, just in time to bail out of his plane before he crashed, and was captured by the SS... he did survive the war.
They were madly in love with that airplane, and they flew all the fighters of the war... The P-38 was their "first love" and is to this very day.
I planned on seeing one fly-by but spent the entire day there... here are a few pictures.....
