View source for P-38 Lightning

== European Theatre ==


After the Battle of Midway, the USAAF began redeploying fighter groups to Britain as part of Operation Bolero, and Lightnings of the 1st Fighter Group were flown across the Atlantic via Iceland. On 14 August, a P-38F and a P-40 operating out of Iceland shot down a Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor over the Atlantic. This was the first Luftwaffe aircraft destroyed by the USAAF.  

P-38 Lightnings had a number of lucky escapes, exemplified by the arrival of the 71st fighter squadron at Goxhill (Lincolnshire, England) in July 1942. The official handover ceremony was scheduled for mid-August, but on the day before the ceremony, Goxhill experienced its only air raid of the war. A single German bomber flew overhead and dropped a very well aimed bomb right on the intersection between the two newly concreted runways, but it didn’t explode and the aircraft were able to continue their mission. (As it turned out, the bomb could not be removed and, for the duration of the war, aircraft had to pass over it every time they took off.)

After 347 sorties with no enemy contact, the 1st, 14th and 82nd Fighter Groups were transferred to the 12th Air Force in North Africa as part of the force being built up for Operation Torch. On 19 November 1942, Lightnings escorted B-17s on a raid over Tunis. On 5 April 1943, 26 P-38Fs of the 82nd destroyed 31 enemy aircraft, helping to establish air superiority in the area, and earning it the German nickname "der Gabelschwanzteufel" – the Fork-Tailed Devil. The P-38 remained active in the Mediterranean for the rest of the war. It was in this theatre that the P-38 suffered its heaviest losses in the air. On 25 August 1943, 13 P-38s were shot down in a single sortie by Jagdgeschwader 53 Bf 109s without achieving a single kill. On 2 September ten P-38s were shot down, in return for a single kill, the 67-victory ace Franz Schiess (who was also the leading "Lightning" killer in the Luftwaffe with 17 destroyed).

Experiences over Germany had shown a need for long-range escort fighters to protect the Eighth Air Force's heavy bomber operations. The P-38Hs of the 55th Fighter Group were transferred to the Eighth in England in September 1943, and were joined by the 20th, 364th and 479th Fighter Groups soon after.

In the Mediterranean Theater, Italian pilots started to face P-38s from late 1942 and considered the type a formidable foe even compared to other lethal fighters including the Supermarine Spitfire. A small number of P-38s fell into the hands of German and Italian units and were subsequently tested and used in combat. Col. Tondi used a P-38, possibly an "E" variant, that landed in Sardinia due to a navigational error. Tondi claimed at least one B-24, downed on 11 August 1943. The P-38 eventually was acquired by Italy for postwar service.

The P-38 performed well in the ETO, but suffered frequent engine failures, due to the inadequate cooling system. Many of the aircraft's problems were addressed by the [[P-38J]], but by September 1944, all but one of the Lightning groups in the Eighth Air Force had converted to the P-51. The Eighth did continue to operate the F-5 reconnaissance version with more success.