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Not very many P-38’s left let alone those still flying.
Good video and thanks.
Wasn’t there another story fairly recently about another pilot that just wanted to see it one more time?
From a couple of months back?
General Robert L. Scot actually flew an F-15 on his 85th birthday. He had to get the Secretary of the Air Force’s approval to do so.
I was 5 years old when the War started. The P-38 was my favorite plane. I remember I had a model of it that I played with all the time, under the dinner table.
Hmmmm ..?? That plane is not a P-38 .. it’s a P-51 Flying Tiger.
And .. I know it’s not a P-38, because my DAD moved to Burbank, CA in 1943, and he went to work building the P-38, along with his younger brother, my Uncle March.
The P-38 is a DUAL-WING aircraft.
We were at the Udvar-Hazy Air and Space Museum near Dulles Airport, and we wandered around for awhile until we came to the P-38. There was a little crowd around it, and we soon figured out it was a family reunion. The patriarch had been a P-38 pilot, and they had brought him there specifically for that plane. I walked up to him, shook his hand and told him that my mom had helped put those planes together. He looked at me and told me to tell her that she had done a great job, which I later did. She started telling me stories about working there. One that stood out was they had hired dwarves to mount the nose guns because average people couldn’t fit.
My good friend I used to aerobatics with Jeff Ethyll went in in a P-38 that he loved so much because his father flew one all through WWII....as he did a test flight before a show in Oregon leaving his wife, mother & father at the airport - where they watched the smoke from his crash.......
Still my fav plane, tho I’ve never flown in one......
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“I’m 101 and three-quarters,” Royal said after returning to the ground at the Colorado Springs Airport to the applause of family and admirers. “As of last week, I went under hospice care. It’s kind of a special day.”
Don’t feel sorry for Frank Royal. He’s not afraid of death. He calls that journey his real “final flight.”
In a sane world, this would be the most liked and most retweeted article in the nation.
Sweet
Kelly Johnson’s first hit.
I once read a history of the P-38. It had lots of early problems, maybe a bit like the F-35.
It also had some real advantages. The dual engines allowed the props to spin in different directions cancelling out the torque twist.
The guns mounted in the center pod also seemed to work better. It also had great range.
Wow! I flew into the Springs last Monday and saw the P-38 flying along with a B-24 — thought the vintage planes were in town to perform at the Academy. Glad to know why the flight was taking place.
P-38 is my favorite plane of WWII.
Richard “Dick” Bong and Tommy McGuire, America’s 1st and 2nd top Aces flew the P-38 in the Pacific. Bong died flying an experimental plane. At his funeral they had an honor flight of P-47’s. Gabby Gabreski a P-47 Ace in the European theater thought it ironic since Bong never had a kind word for the P-47.
My iPad screen just got blurry!