EAA Warbirds - Killer Lightning - March/April 2022

KEEP ’EM FLYING

High-Honor Sabre Ten Tactical Tips

Killer

LIGHTNING

MARCH/APRIL 2022

A LOCKHEED LEGEND TAKES

TO THE AIR

AGAIN AGAIN COLLINGS FOUNDATION’S P-38L-5

BY BUDD DAVISSON

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PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF THE COLLINGS FOUNDATION

www.warbirds-eaa.org

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ELECTING THE RIGHT AIRCRAFT for Operation

Vengeance was easy. Meeting the vital timing parameters of the mission was not. Flying a diversionary route to the rendezvous so the enemy couldn’t guess the Allies’ plans would require a 600-mile trip. The straight-line journey home would be 400 miles. The need for a U.S. fighter with a thousand-mile range in the Pacific theater in 1943 meant only one aircraft fit the mission profile: Even when equipped with larger-than-normal drop tanks, the P-38 was the only choice.

However, finding the target — a single aircraft that would be flying from island to island 400 miles away — while using only a borrowed Navy compass and a military-issue, time-hackable A-11 wristwatch, presented a nearly impossible navigational problem. That said, 16 339th Fighter Squadron, 347th Fighter Group P-38Gs, led by Squadron Cmdr. Maj. John Mitchell, arrived at their calculated rendezvous point within one minute of the time the Betty bomber carrying Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto, commander of the Imperial Japanese Navy, was estimated to be there. And it was on time. In the next two minutes, on April 18, 1943, the war in the Pacific took a decidedly unexpected turn.

The removal of Japan’s supremely talented naval commander, who also planned the attack on Pearl Harbor, has been lauded as one of the most important single missions in the Pacific theater during World War II. With Yamamoto out of the equation, victory was just that much more likely. The action also helped demoralize the enemy while heartening a U.S. population that badly needed a boost. Regardless, the P-38’s ability to seemingly reach across time and space to strike its enemy added to the Lockheed wonder’s already legendary status.

Although the P-38 was replaced fairly quickly by the mighty Mustang in the European theater, the Mustang was slow in arriving in the Pacific, and the P-38’s range and firepower kept it in action almost to the end.

The fact that America’s two top aces, Richard Bong (40 kills) and Tommy McGuire (38 kills), flew Lightnings is also hard to ignore. This is one of many reasons Rob Collings and the Collings Foundation in Stow, Massachusetts, thought it important that a Lightning be added to its already formidable lineup of aviation’s historic superstars.

Collings’ airplanes are the most visible segment of the Collings Foundation’s effort to preserve and present American history to the public.

Its website summarizes what lies behind the preservation of its artifacts, which range from 1800s farm equipment to the P-38: “The purpose of the Collings Foundation is to organize and support ‘living history’ events and the presentation of historical artifacts and content that enable Americans to learn more about their heritage through direct participation.”

In explaining how this mission applies to their aircraft, Rob Collings said, “We’re not looking for one of each type of aircraft.

What we are trying to do is put examples of the top 10 aircraft of WWII, as judged by their historical contributions, back in the air and in front of audiences. And those aircraft may not all be American. Seeing and hearing them in the air makes the audience part of the action. They are ‘experiencing’ history rather than just walking around dusty airplanes sitting in a museum. That’s pretty much the way the foundation and our new museum approaches everything. We want to make the audience part of the action, which is why we attend and sponsor as many flying events as possible.

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Easily the most recognizable fighter outline of WWII!

PHOTOGRAPHY BY SCOTT SLOCUM

www.warbirds-eaa.org

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“Acquiring a P-38 has been a very longterm goal,” Rob said. “It was on the list almost from the beginning of the museum and the foundation in 1979. However, as we got deeper into rehabilitating WWII aircraft and spent more time on the air show circuit seeing dozens of warbirds, I found myself being more attracted to authenticity and originality than perfect paint, fit, and finish. Our stock in trade is creating historically accurate contexts and trying to draw the audience into them, so we like our aircraft to follow that guideline. This is true in the way we’ve developed and laid out our museum and in the way we’ve built our various collections, including the airplanes.

We began seeking ‘original’ airplanes rather than finely finished ones, and when we rehab them, it is with originality and authenticity in mind.

“Unfortunately, when it comes to warbirds, it’s almost a given that, if it is a flying aircraft, it never saw combat,” he said. “Combat-veteran aircraft are extremely rare because they were seldom returned stateside. This is why our Mk. IX Spitfire, which flew 121 missions and was part of the first 8th Air Force fighter mission, is such a prize to us. However, our P-38L, like most other surviving warbirds, never left the States.

Logically, one would think that remaining stateside would guarantee that more of each type would survive, but the P-38 is unique in that area.

“Many of the retired warbirds found other occupations after the war,” Rob said. “For instance, TBFs, B-25s, A-26s, and PB4Ys fought fires, and Thunderbolts and Mustangs went to foreign air forces, as did the B-24s. A number of P-38L-5s like ours were converted to F-5Gs at the end of the war with the installation of a camera nose. However, after the war, there were Twin Beeches at almost every airport that could do the same photography work with less aggravation. The Lightning didn’t have a postwar use and was difficult to maintain, so many were simply cut up. The result is that, although slightly over 10,000 were built, only an estimated eight are still flying. An unknown number are in museums, but to see one in the air is rare.

That was reason enough for us to add a Lightning to the stable.

“When we started looking,” he said, “we were attracted immediately to the airplane we now call Pudgy, because it checked the boxes on our checklist: historical significance; its degree of restoration, which was comparably little; and originality. Too often, when an airplane is restored, the quality of the work is so high that it deviates from the ‘as built’ look we like in our airplanes. When an airplane is overrestored, it loses the feel it had back in the day.”

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When we started looking, we were attracted immediately to the airplane we now call Pudgy, because it checked the boxes on our checklist: historical significance; its degree of restoration, which was comparably little; and originality. — Rob Collings Although Collings’ Pudgy (named after Tommy McGuire’s birds with a matching paint scheme) wasn’t put to work after the war, it did much more than its share of traveling. For decades, after it was retired as a photo survey bird in the late ’40s, it was sold from collector to collector, museum to museum, etc. In fact, although it has been referred to as a warbird that never left the States, in reality it has crossed the Atlantic several times as a result of ownership changes. It seems as if every major international collector is on the list of previous owners. The good news, however, is that it spent very little time abandoned at an airport sinking into the weeds, as so many members of its peer group did. In fact, for 15 years it was on display in the Harrah’s Casino museum/collection. For another 13 years it was in

From one end to the other, each boom is tightly packed with wiring, control cables, plumbing, radiators, etc.

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The location of the horizontal tail made bailing out of a P-38 problematic.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY SCOTT SLOCUM AND THE COLLINGS FOUNDATION

Evergreen’s collection. It has always been an intact airplane, and most of its life was spent indoors. Also, though it went through several restorations, they weren’t the kind we typically think of, in which the airframe is basically remanufactured. The types of restorations it received were more like intensive annuals, because virtually nothing in the airframe had seriously deteriorated. All the systems needed refreshing, the corrosion was very limited, and there was no need to replace skins in search of perfection. This was one of the things that attracted the Collings Foundation to that specific P-38. www.warbirds-eaa.org

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PHOTOGRAPHY BY SCOTT XXX SLOCUM

www.warbirds-eaa.org

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“In our efforts to bring the history an artifact represents to the public, we’re very aware that, without them knowing it, the average museum/ fly-in attendee is subliminally aware of the originality and/or authenticity an artifact projects,” Rob said. “The artifact, in this case an airplane, has a ‘feel’ about it in which a shiny, perfectly finished artifact comes across as a display item. There is something vaguely artificial about it. The artifact that still carries the patina and the scars its life has left on it has a ‘been there’ feel to it. There is a visual connection to its past that most viewers react to.

They feel closer to its history. That’s the exact feel we’re trying for and is one of the overriding reasons Pudgy was brought into the Collings Foundation.

Here was an airplane that allowed us to field a reliable, mechanically perfect example of the breed that looks and feels as if only a week or so ago it was sitting on a sandy airstrip on a Pacific island. Every time I look at it, its small dings and wear marks give me a feeling of continuity to its past.”

Much of the early restoration work had been performed during the 13 years the airplane was in the Evergreen Museum. At that time, both Bill Muszala and Darrell Skurich, legends in the warbird restoration field, began the process of rehabilitating the mechanical systems. That was in the 1990s.

“It was close to being a flyable airplane when it came to us, but it was still in Oregon and obviously needed to be gone through and brought up to our standards, both in safety and authenticity, 34

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before it was flown,” Rob said. “We gave the project to American Aero Service in New Smyrna Beach, Florida, to go through it, with Ashley Ezell being the lead on the project. He knew what we expected in terms of authenticity.”

When discussing the airplane, Ashley said, “Having grown up in the warbird business, I have been fortunate in having experience with a variety of the significant warbirds currently in operation. I was familiar with the Lightning, having had a major part in the restoration of Red Bull’s P-38 in my father’s shop.

“Now working for American Aero Services, I was asked to accompany Rob and Gary Norville, my boss, to the Evergreen Flight Museum in Oregon, where the airplane was still being displayed, and assist in the initial inspection,” he said. “I started going through the airplane, and it took three months and four trips before it was ready for Rob to fly it down to Florida. It arrived here in May of 2018.

“When I got into the airplane, it was much better than I expected,” Ashley said.

“The previous shop had done a nice, clean restoration and, considering the complexity of the airframe, made our task as simple as possible. Most of the work we had to do was what you’d expect if you

had left a flyable warbird sitting around not flying.

Hydraulic leaks, fuel cell problems, carbs, hoses, etc.

One of the more unique features of the Lightning, as warbirds go, is the packaging of the equipment and components in the airframe. Especially in the booms. A lot of wiring and plumbing is packed in a very tight space.

“The airframe was in such nice condition that it was simply a matter of opening it up and inspecting and verifying the systems,” he said. “We decided to change the engines for a couple of fresh ones from Vintage V-12s, and we replaced the radiators with new units. We were warned that they would probably leak, and within an hour of ground running, they did.

Pacific Oil Cooler had developed a radiator that fits in the space allotted but uses a modern bar and plate design. They have proven to be much more reliable than the original brass/copper tube-style units.

“Everything we did had us researching how it was done in 1944, which meant using the right color of chromate primer and changing out hardware and fittings that aren’t period correct,” he said. “However, other than some clear coat to preserve the patina and a little silver lacquer in a few places, I didn’t have to even touch the sheet metal.

In fact, in the entire project, I didn’t have to drill out a single screw. They all backed out like they’d been put in yesterday. That is never the case with these old airplanes.

“One area that we didn’t get to do, but is on the list to be done, is completing the gun bay,” Ashley said. “There are a lot of mechanisms and accessories that go in there besides the guns. We’re looking for,

or are gearing up to manufacture from factory drawings, stuff like ejection chutes, motor-driven ammo feeds, etc.

We have a continual scavenger hunt underway for applicable parts. Here, too, Rob wants total authenticity in that area, so while it’s a challenge that includes a lot of ferreting out of details, it’s a fun challenge.”

Today, Pudgy is in short-term storage not far from the Collings Museum, where it will be put on display when space is made available. “When we built the new museum, we thought we had plenty of room, but we don’t,” Rob said. “In a way, it’s a good thing to have more historically important artifacts than we have room for. Plans are underway to remedy that.”

When asked what aircraft are on the foundation’s bucket list, Rob said they had only two, one of which was already in the process of being added to the Collings flying fold.

“We’ve just finalized a deal with the U.S. Navy in which they are loaning us one of their SBDs,” Rob said. “This will fill an important gap in our WWII coverage. The last aircraft we want will be kept under wraps until the deal is finalized.”

When you hear Rob talk about projects they have underway — which include, among others, a B-17, an Fw 190, and what he said will be an amazingly historically accurate Nieuport 28 — it goes without saying that the collection will never be considered complete. In the world of the Collings Foundation, collecting is a never-ending process because history itself is constantly being rewritten and is still being made every day. Their goal is to be there to chronicle it for future generations.

At no time in the Collings P-38’s life was it left abandoned to sink into the weeds. Also, its originality has never been compromised by extensive restoration. It is this authenticity that attracted the Foundation to it as a new addition to their equally new museum.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY SCOTT SLOCUM AND THE COLLINGS FOUNDATION

www.warbirds-eaa.org

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