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A stolen American P-38 Lightning landed in enemy hands, and what German test pilots found inside revealed why the aircraft terrified the Luftwaffe. From a compass error over the Mediterranean to secret trials at Rechlin, this WW2 military history story follows the captured twin-boom fighter as engineers examined its wiring, turbo-superchargers, nose-mounted guns, and astonishing range.
The transcript traces how the Lightning became the “fork-tailed devil,” from North Africa and Tunisia to the Yamamoto interception and the Pacific air war. It also shows how pilots like Richard Bong and Thomas McGuire turned the P-38 into a strategic weapon, while Lockheed kept improving the design with dive flaps, better cooling, and stronger ailerons. Along the way, German assessments, captured aircraft testing, and frontline combat reports build a gripping picture of air combat technology and wartime production.
This is a narrated World War II history feature for listeners who enjoy military aviation, fighter plane stories, captured aircraft analysis, and documentary-style storytelling. It blends battlefield action, test pilot evaluation, and the industrial race behind the P-38 Lightning.
Ideal for WW2 stories, military history, aviation history, fighter aircraft documentaries, and narrated history content. If you search for P-38 Lightning, German test pilot, captured American fighter, Rechlin, or World War II aircraft stories, this is the kind of detailed historical narration built for you.
The transcript traces how the Lightning became the “fork-tailed devil,” from North Africa and Tunisia to the Yamamoto interception and the Pacific air war. It also shows how pilots like Richard Bong and Thomas McGuire turned the P-38 into a strategic weapon, while Lockheed kept improving the design with dive flaps, better cooling, and stronger ailerons. Along the way, German assessments, captured aircraft testing, and frontline combat reports build a gripping picture of air combat technology and wartime production.
This is a narrated World War II history feature for listeners who enjoy military aviation, fighter plane stories, captured aircraft analysis, and documentary-style storytelling. It blends battlefield action, test pilot evaluation, and the industrial race behind the P-38 Lightning.
Ideal for WW2 stories, military history, aviation history, fighter aircraft documentaries, and narrated history content. If you search for P-38 Lightning, German test pilot, captured American fighter, Rechlin, or World War II aircraft stories, this is the kind of detailed historical narration built for you.
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LearningTranscript
00:00On September 19th, 1943, at a lakeside airfield in Mecklenburg, that appeared on no public map,
00:07a row of aircraft sat in the morning light that should not have been there.
00:11A Spitfire, a B-17, a Thunderbolt, and at the end of the line,
00:17something no one in Germany had ever built, ever imagined, or ever fully understood.
00:22A twin-boomed, twin-engined American fighter with a central cockpit pod,
00:26counter-rotating propellers, and a silhouette so alien it looked like it had arrived from a different decade of aviation.
00:33The airfield was Erprobungsstelle Rechlin, the Luftwaffe's most secret flight test center,
00:39and the aircraft was a Lockheed P-38 Lightning, freshly painted with German crosses over the spots where American stars
00:46had been.
00:47Its Luftwaffe code read T9XB. It had arrived from Italy.
00:52The story of how it got here was strange enough.
00:55But the story of what German pilots discovered when they climbed into its cockpit?
00:59That was something else entirely.
01:02The men walking the flight line that morning were not ordinary pilots.
01:06Rechlin was where the Luftwaffe sent its best engineers and its most experienced test flyers to answer one question.
01:13How good is the enemy?
01:15They had evaluated Spitfires and found them nimble but fragile.
01:19They had climbed into a captured B-17 and marveled at the turret engineering.
01:23They had tested a Thunderbolt and been stunned by its dive.
01:27But the P-38 was different.
01:29The P-38 was not just an airplane they hadn't seen before.
01:33It was an airplane they could not have built.
01:36And the words that one of those German pilots would write about this machine would not read like a test
01:41report.
01:41If this story already has your attention, do me a favor, hit that subscribe button and leave a like.
01:49It helps this channel bring the stories of the men who built and flew these machines to the people who
01:55still care.
01:55To understand what those words meant, you need to understand how this American fighter ended up on a German runway
02:02in the first place.
02:04Because the P-38 Lightning did not arrive at Rechlin through any brilliant act of German intelligence, it arrived through
02:11a compass error.
02:11On June 12, 1943, an American pilot, his name was never recorded in any surviving document, took off on a
02:20ferry flight between Gibraltar and Malta.
02:23Somewhere over the western Mediterranean, his compass failed.
02:26He drifted north.
02:27And when he finally spotted an airfield below and put his wheels down, he was not on Malta.
02:33He was on Sardinia.
02:35At Capilterra, six miles southwest of Cagliari, an airfield controlled by the Italian Regia Aeronautica, within minutes, he was a
02:44prisoner.
02:45Within hours, the most radical single-seat fighter in the American arsenal was being examined by Italian ground crews who
02:52had never seen anything like it.
02:53Two engines on a single-seat fighter, a cockpit pod suspended between twin booms, a nose packed with four .50
03:01caliber machine guns and a 20mm cannon, not in the wings, where every other fighter in the world placed its
03:08guns, but dead center, pointing straight ahead.
03:11The Italians called their chief test pilot.
03:14Colonelo Angelo Tondi commanded the first test unit at Guidonia, the Italian flight research center northeast of Rome.
03:21Tondi flew the captured lightning from Sardinia to Guidonia and began evaluation flights immediately.
03:27He was a skilled pilot.
03:28And he was about to do something no test pilot is supposed to do with an evaluation aircraft.
03:34On August 11, 1943, Tondi strapped into the American fighter, took off from Guidonia, and climbed toward a formation of
03:41roughly 50 B-24s returning from bombing Terni.
03:45He attacked.
03:46One bomber fell from the sky off the shore of Torvianica.
03:49Six American airmen parachuted into the sea.
03:52An American-built aircraft, wearing Italian markings, had just shot down an American bomber.
03:58But Tondi's war in the lightning lasted exactly one mission.
04:02Italian fuel was too corrosive for the P-38's tanks.
04:05The engines began to degrade.
04:07The aircraft was grounded.
04:08And then, as Italy itself began to collapse, the lightning was shipped north, across the Alps, into Germany, to the
04:15one place in the Reich where captured enemy aircraft were studied with scientific precision.
04:21Rechlin.
04:22Here is where the story shifts.
04:24Because when the German engineers and test pilots at Rechlin opened that cockpit and began their evaluation, they were not
04:30looking at an airplane.
04:31They were looking into the industrial soul of a country that had been at war for less than two years
04:37and was already building machines that Germany, with a decade head start, could not match.
04:43What they found in that cockpit told them something about this war that no intelligence briefing, no front-line report,
04:49and no Luftwaffe general had yet been willing to say out loud.
04:54The German pilots at Rechlin knew the P-38 by reputation before they ever touched one.
05:00By the autumn of 1943, the lightning had already carved a name for itself across two continents, and the stories
05:07coming back from the front lines did not sound like ordinary combat reports.
05:12The first time German fighter pilots encountered the P-38 in numbers was over North Africa, in late 1942, during
05:20the weeks after Operation Torch.
05:22And from the very first engagements, something was wrong.
05:25Not with German tactics.
05:27Not with German aircraft.
05:29Something was wrong with the way the American bullets arrived.
05:32A Messerschmitt pilot attacking a Spitfire knew what to expect.
05:36Wing-mounted guns through a cone of fire that spread and scattered.
05:40You could fly through it and survive.
05:42Rounds hit your tail, your wingtip, your fuselage.
05:46Scattered, like buckshot from a distance.
05:48The damage was real, but it was distributed.
05:51You could absorb it.
05:52You could limp home.
05:54The P-38's bullets did not scatter.
05:56They arrived in a single, tight stream.
05:59Four heavy machine guns and a cannon.
06:02All firing from the nose.
06:04All pointed straight ahead.
06:05All converging on the same point at the same instant.
06:08A German pilot who crossed into that stream did not take a hit to a wingtip and a hit to
06:14a tail.
06:14He took everything in the same square meter of aircraft.
06:18Wing-mounted guns required careful harmonization.
06:21The pilot had to calculate the exact distance where his bullet paths crossed and fire at that range or miss
06:27entirely.
06:28The P-38 had no convergence problem.
06:31Its guns hit at 200 yards, at 500, at 1,000.
06:35The stream was parallel.
06:37It went where the nose pointed.
06:39And when it connected, it did not wound an aircraft.
06:42It killed one.
06:43Remember that detail.
06:45The nose-mounted guns.
06:46Because it will matter far more than you might think right now.
06:49Not because of what it did in combat,
06:51but because of what it told the Germans at Rechlin about the mind that designed this machine.
06:56By the spring of 1943, the lightning was everywhere over Tunisia.
07:01On April 5th, 26 P-38s of the 82nd Fighter Group
07:05intercepted a large formation of German and Italian aircraft near the Kapbon Peninsula.
07:11When it was over, the American pilots claimed 31 enemy aircraft destroyed.
07:1631 from 26 fighters in a single engagement.
07:20The numbers were almost certainly inflated, as combat claims always were.
07:24But even the confirmed kills were devastating.
07:28And it was not only in the air.
07:29The P-38 was doing something to German ground forces that no other Allied fighter could do.
07:35It was strafing supply convoys, fuel depots, artillery positions,
07:39and surviving the anti-aircraft fire that would have shredded a single-engine aircraft.
07:44A Messerschmitt 109 that lost this engine to a rifle-caliber round was finished.
07:50A P-38 that lost one engine still had another.
07:53It could fly home on one.
07:55German flak gunners watched their tracers strike a lightning's left boom,
07:59watched the engine cough and die,
08:01and then watched the aircraft climb away on the right engine alone,
08:05turning gently, heading south, out of range.
08:08No single-engine fighter in any air force on Earth could do that.
08:13There is a story, repeated in American histories, disputed by some German veterans,
08:18that a Luftwaffe pilot, exhausted and panicked, stumbled into an Allied camp near Tunisia,
08:24pointed at the sky, and repeated one phrase over and over.
08:33Whether that specific incident happened exactly as told, the nickname stuck.
08:37And it stuck because the twin-boom silhouette of the P-38 was the one shape in the sky
08:42that German troops in North Africa learned to recognize instantly.
08:45And to fear.
08:53A good Messerschmitt pilot could out-turn a lightning at low altitude without breaking a sweat.
08:58Heinz Baer, one of Germany's top aces with over 200 victories,
09:02considered the P-38 easy prey in a turning fight.
09:05But the lightning was not built for turning fights.
09:08It was built for something else, something Germany had no answer for.
09:13Range, speed at altitude, and the ability to appear where it was not expected,
09:18do catastrophic damage, and vanish before the enemy could organize a response.
09:23Hold that thought.
09:24Because what the P-38 was about to do in April of 1943,
09:28just days after the Kat-Bahn air battle,
09:31would prove that this aircraft was not merely a good fighter,
09:34it was a strategic weapon, the kind of weapon that changes wars.
09:40On April 13, 1943, American naval cryptographers at Pearl Harbor
09:45intercepted a Japanese radio transmission.
09:47The message, decoded through the ALTRA program,
09:50contained a detailed flight schedule, departure time, arrival time, route,
09:55escort strength, for an inspection tour by the commander
09:58of the Imperial Japanese Combined Fleet,
10:00the man who had planned the attack on Pearl Harbor.
10:04The most important military leader in the Japanese Empire.
10:08Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto would fly from Rabul to Bougainville on the morning of April 18.
10:14He would travel in a Mitsubishi G-4M bomber.
10:17He would be escorted by 6-0 fighters.
10:20He would be punctual.
10:22He was famous for it.
10:23The order came from the top.
10:25Secretary of the Navy, Frank Knox.
10:28Approved by President Roosevelt himself.
10:31One sentence captured the weight of what was being asked.
10:35Squadron 339, P-38, must at all costs reach and destroy.
10:40There was only one aircraft in the entire American arsenal,
10:45in the entire Allied arsenal, that had the range to fly 435 miles over open ocean,
10:52intercept a target with split-second timing, fight its way through an escort,
10:56and fly 435 miles back, the P-38 Lightning.
11:02And the mission that followed would become the longest-range fighter intercept
11:06in the history of aerial warfare.
11:09What happened over Bougainville on the morning of April 18
11:12is one of the most extraordinary 30 seconds of the entire war.
11:16On the night of April 17, 1943,
11:20Major John Mitchell sat in the operations dugout at Henderson Field on Guadalcanal,
11:24surrounded by Navy and Marine brass he had never seen gathered in one room before.
11:29Mitchell commanded the 339th Fighter Squadron.
11:32He was 30.
11:33He was calm.
11:34And the men in that bunker were about to hand him
11:37the most precisely calculated fighter mission of the Second World War.
11:41The decoded message lay on the table.
11:43Yamamoto would depart Rabaul at 0600 hours.
11:46He would fly southeast in a Betty Bomber, a Mitsubishi G4M, escorted by six zeros.
11:53He would land at Balalai Airfield on a small island near Bougainville at 0945.
11:59He was known to be fanatically punctual.
12:02The Americans were betting everything on that punctuality.
12:06Mitchell studied the map.
12:07Bougainville was 435 miles from Henderson Field.
12:11A straight-line intercept was impossible.
12:14Japanese coast watchers and radar stations dotted the islands along the direct route.
12:19If the P-38s were spotted,
12:21Yamamoto's pilots would simply turn around.
12:24The element of surprise was everything.
12:27So Mitchell drew a dogleg.
12:29His lightnings would fly west over open ocean, below 50 feet,
12:33some accounts say as low as 10,
12:35to avoid radar detection.
12:37No radio contact.
12:39No climbing above the wavetops.
12:41Then a sharp turn north,
12:43a final sprint to the intercept point,
12:45and a climb to altitude at the last possible moment.
12:49Total distance?
12:50Over 600 miles.
12:52Most of it over open water with no landmarks.
12:55Navigating by compass and stopwatch alone.
12:58If Mitchell's calculations were off by 2 minutes,
13:02they would miss Yamamoto entirely.
13:04If they were off by 10,
13:06they would run out of fuel and ditch in the Pacific.
13:0918 P-38s were supposed to fly.
13:12Two could not take off.
13:14One had a flat tire.
13:15The other had drop tanks that would not feed fuel.
13:1916 lifted off from Henderson at 0725 on the morning of April 18th.
13:23Four were designated the killer flight.
13:26The rest would climb to 18,000 feet
13:29and deal with the zero escort.
13:31The four killers would stay low and go for the bombers.
13:34Think about what was being asked of these men.
13:36Fly for two hours at wavetop height,
13:39burning fuel they could barely afford,
13:41across open ocean with no navigation aids,
13:44hit an exact point in the sky at an exact second,
13:47fight through an escort of Japan's best fighters,
13:50destroy a specific aircraft,
13:52and fly two hours back,
13:54all without losing the formation,
13:56running dry,
13:57or being intercepted by the hundreds of Japanese aircraft
13:59based on the islands around them.
14:01At 0934, one minute ahead of schedule,
14:05Mitchell's flight crossed the coast of Bougainville
14:07and pulled up.
14:08And there,
14:09exactly where the decoded message said it would be,
14:12descending toward Balalay at 4,500 feet,
14:14was a Betty bomber.
14:16A second Betty flew just behind it.
14:18Six zeros rode above.
14:20Mitchell radioed two words.
14:23Bogies, 11 o'clock.
14:25What happened in the next 90 seconds
14:27has been argued about for 80 years.
14:30First Lieutenant Rex Barber, 25,
14:33from Culbertson, Oregon,
14:34pushed his throttles forward
14:35and dove for the lead Betty.
14:37Captain Thomas Lanphier broke toward the zeros.
14:40The escort scattered.
14:42Barber closed from behind and below.
14:44His 450s and his cannon opened up at close range.
14:48That concentrated, parallel stream of fire
14:51that wing-mounted guns could never produce.
14:53He hit the right engine.
14:55He hit the fuselage.
14:57He raked the bomber from tail to nose.
15:00The Betty's right engine erupted in black smoke.
15:03The bomber dropped below the treeline
15:05and disappeared into the jungle canopy.
15:07It did not emerge.
15:08The second Betty, carrying Vice Admiral Matome Ugaki,
15:13Yamamoto's chief of staff,
15:15was hit moments later,
15:16likely by Lieutenant Besby Holmes.
15:19It crashed into the sea.
15:21Ugaki survived.
15:22One P-38 did not come home.
15:25Lieutenant Raymond Hine, trailing smoke,
15:27last seen heading south over the water,
15:30was never found.
15:31He was the mission's only American loss.
15:34Barber landed at Henderson Field before noon.
15:36His lightning had 104 bullet holes
15:39scattered across its airframe.
15:41He climbed out and said almost nothing.
15:44There was nothing to say.
15:45The mission had lasted five hours
15:47and covered over a thousand miles.
15:49The actual shooting had lasted less than two minutes.
15:53The next day, a Japanese search party
15:55found Yamamoto's body in the jungle near Buen.
15:58He was still strapped in his seat,
16:00thrown clear of the wreckage.
16:02Two .50 caliber rounds had struck him,
16:04one in the shoulder,
16:05one in the jaw.
16:06He had died before the aircraft hit the trees.
16:09His white-gloved hands still gripped his katana.
16:13Japan withheld the news for over a month.
16:16When they finally announced his death,
16:18they attributed it to combat during an inspection tour.
16:21They never admitted the Americans
16:23had specifically targeted him.
16:26They never explained how American fighters
16:28had appeared at the precise time and place,
16:30400 miles from the nearest American base,
16:33with the kind of timing that suggested either impossible luck
16:37or something far worse.
16:39Here is what matters for the story we are following.
16:42The story of the German pilot at Recklin,
16:45examining that captured P-38 in September of 1943.
16:50He did not yet know the details of the Yamamoto mission.
16:53The operation was classified at the highest level.
16:56Even most Americans did not know.
16:59But he did not need to know.
17:01Because what he was discovering in the cockpit of T-9XB
17:04was telling him the same story the Yamamoto mission
17:07had already proved over Bougainville.
17:10That the P-38 Lightning was not just a fighter aircraft.
17:14It was a systems weapon.
17:17A machine that combined range, firepower, precision,
17:20survivability, and manufacturing quality
17:23into a single airframe
17:24in a way that no German designer had attempted
17:27and no German factory could replicate.
17:30And when he finally wrote his assessment,
17:32the words that traveled up through the Luftwaffe's technical chain
17:35and landed on desks where men understood exactly what they meant,
17:39those words did not praise the aircraft's speed
17:42or its guns or its engines.
17:45They described something far more dangerous.
17:48Something Germany could not build,
17:50could not copy, and could not stop.
17:54The first thing the German engineers noticed
17:56was not the engines or the guns or the twin booms.
18:00It was the wiring.
18:02A Luftwaffe mechanic at Recklin
18:04who opened an inspection panel on a Messerschmitt 109
18:07found wires bundled by hand,
18:09often rerouted mid-production
18:11when a design change came through from the factory floor.
18:14German aircraft wiring in 1943 was functional.
18:17It worked.
18:18But it carried the fingerprints of an industry under pressure.
18:21Shortcuts.
18:22Substitutions.
18:23Field modifications that had been folded back into production
18:26because there was no time to re-engineer them properly.
18:29The mechanic who opened the inspection panel
18:31on the P-38's central nacelle found something different.
18:34The wiring was clean, organized, color-coded,
18:38bundled in uniform looms
18:40that ran in logical paths from instrument to junction to engine.
18:44It did not look like the wiring of a machine
18:46built under wartime pressure.
18:47It looked like the wiring of a machine
18:50built by people who had time to think,
18:52and a system that turned that thinking into a standard
18:55that every factory worker on the line could follow
18:57without improvising.
18:59That was the first clue.
19:01But it was not the one that mattered most.
19:03The German engineers worked their way back through the twin booms,
19:07past the radiators and oil coolers,
19:09and found the component that would occupy most of their report.
19:13Mounted behind each Allison engine,
19:15fed by carefully ducted intake air,
19:17sat a General Electric B1 turbo-supercharger.
19:22This is a detail worth pausing on,
19:24because it changes the meaning of everything that follows.
19:27Germany understood turbo-supercharging.
19:30German engineers had experimented
19:32with exhaust-driven turbines for years.
19:35The principle was simple enough.
19:37Use the engine's own exhaust gases
19:39to spin a turbine that compressed incoming air,
19:42feeding denser oxygen to the engine at altitude,
19:45where the thin atmosphere would otherwise starve it of power.
19:48In theory,
19:49any competent engineering department could design one.
19:52But theory was not the problem.
19:54Production was the problem.
19:56A turbo-supercharger spins
19:58at tens of thousands of revolutions per minute
20:00in temperatures exceeding a thousand degrees.
20:03The metallurgy required,
20:05nickel alloys, chromium steels,
20:08precision bearings,
20:09demanded manufacturing tolerances
20:11that German industry in 1943
20:13could achieve in a laboratory,
20:15but could not replicate on a factory floor.
20:18Not reliably.
20:19Not at scale.
20:21Not in the thousands.
20:23The Americans could.
20:24The General Electric turbos
20:26bolted into the back of this captured lightning
20:28were not handcrafted prototypes.
20:31They were production units.
20:32Mass-produced.
20:34Interchangeable.
20:35Built to a specification tight enough
20:37that a mechanic in North Africa
20:39could pull a failed unit off one P-38
20:41and bolt on a replacement from a crate
20:44without filing a single surface.
20:46And this is where the words begin.
20:49A German test pilot,
20:50not a mechanic,
20:51not an engineer,
20:52but a man who had flown Messerschmitts
20:54and Focke-Wulfs in combat
20:56and understood what performance meant in the air,
20:58looked at the complete package of the P-38
21:01and reached a conclusion
21:02that had nothing to do with any single component.
21:05What he saw was a machine
21:07that solved problems
21:08Germany had chosen to ignore.
21:10Counter-rotating propellers
21:11that eliminated torque,
21:13the invisible force
21:14that made every single-engine fighter on Earth
21:16pull to one side on takeoff,
21:18killing inexperienced pilots
21:20before they ever reached combat altitude.
21:22The Americans had simply engineered it
21:24out of the equation.
21:26Two engines spinning in opposite directions.
21:29No torque.
21:30A trainee pilot could fly this aircraft
21:32off the runway without fighting the controls.
21:35Nose-mounted armament
21:36that eliminated convergence.
21:38The mathematical headache
21:39that forced every other fighter pilot
21:41in the world
21:41to calculate the exact range
21:43where his wing-mounted guns crossed
21:45and fire only at that distance
21:47or waste ammunition.
21:49The P-38's designer
21:50had put all five weapons in the nose,
21:52pointing straight ahead, parallel.
21:54The problem was not solved.
21:56It was erased.
21:57It no longer existed.
21:59And turbo-supercharging
22:01that gave a liquid-cooled Allison engine,
22:03an engine Germany considered mediocre,
22:05an engine that powered
22:06the disappointing P-40,
22:08the high-altitude performance
22:10of a supercharged Daimler-Benz.
22:12The same engine transformed,
22:15not by redesigning it,
22:16but by bolting on a component
22:17that Germany could not mass-produce.
22:20Remember the name Steinhoff.
22:22Johannes Mackie Steinhoff,
22:25176 victories,
22:27Knights Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords,
22:29one of the most respected fighter pilots
22:31in the Luftwaffe.
22:33Steinhoff fought P-38s over North Africa
22:35and the Mediterranean.
22:37He watched his fellow pilots
22:38dismiss the Lightning as clumsy,
22:40as too big,
22:41as a twin-engine mistake.
22:44Heinz Baer called it a certain kill.
22:47Steinhoff disagreed.
22:48His words,
22:50recorded,
22:51published,
22:51verified,
22:52described the P-38
22:54as a fast,
22:55low-profiled,
22:56fantastic fighter
22:57and a real danger
22:59when it was above you.
23:00Vulnerable only if you caught it
23:02from behind,
23:03below,
23:04closing fast.
23:05But on the attack,
23:06a tremendous aircraft.
23:08That assessment did not sound
23:10like a man describing
23:11an inferior airplane.
23:13It sounded like a man
23:14describing something he respected.
23:16And at Recklin,
23:17the engineers were arriving
23:19at the same conclusion
23:20from the opposite direction.
23:21Not from fighting the P-38,
23:23but from touching it,
23:25measuring it,
23:26disassembling it.
23:27What stunned them
23:28was not any one feature.
23:30It was the totality.
23:32The fact that a single aircraft
23:33combined long-range,
23:35concentrated firepower,
23:36high-altitude performance,
23:38single-engine survivability,
23:40and production-line manufacturing quality
23:42in a package
23:43that no German factory
23:44could replicate.
23:45Not because German engineers
23:47lacked the talent,
23:48but because the industrial system
23:50behind them,
23:51the supply chains,
23:52the metallurgy,
23:53the standardization,
23:54the production philosophy,
23:56could not support
23:57this kind of integration
23:58at scale.
23:59And the P-38
24:00was about to prove,
24:01in a theater of war
24:025,000 miles from Recklin,
24:05that the men flying it
24:06were every bit as extraordinary
24:07as the machine itself.
24:10In the skies over New Guinea,
24:12a 22-year-old farm boy
24:14from Wisconsin
24:14was climbing into a lightning
24:16with his girlfriend's portrait
24:17painted on the nose.
24:19Within 18 months,
24:20he would become
24:21the deadliest fighter pilot
24:23in American history.
24:24Richard Ira Bong,
24:2622,
24:27from Poplar, Wisconsin,
24:28a town so small
24:29it barely registered
24:30on a state map,
24:32had been flying P-38s
24:33for less than a year
24:34when he discovered
24:36something about himself
24:37that no flight instructor
24:38at Luke Field
24:39had predicted.
24:40He could not miss.
24:42That is not quite accurate.
24:45Bong himself
24:45would have told you,
24:46and did tell anyone
24:47who asked,
24:48that his gunnery
24:49was probably the worst
24:50in the Army Air Forces.
24:52He meant it.
24:53His deflection shooting
24:55was poor.
24:55His tracking at distance
24:57was erratic.
24:58By every measurable standard
25:00of marksmanship
25:00taught in training,
25:02Dick Bong was an average shot
25:03at best.
25:04But Bong had solved
25:06that problem
25:06the way the P-38
25:07had solved
25:08the convergence problem.
25:09He eliminated it.
25:11Instead of calculating
25:12angles and lead distances,
25:14Bong simply flew
25:15directly behind his target,
25:17closed to a range
25:18so short
25:19he could see the rivets
25:20on the enemy's fuselage,
25:21and pressed the trigger.
25:24450s and a cannon
25:25firing straight ahead
25:26from a nose
25:27that was pointed
25:28at the center of mass
25:29of a Japanese fighter
25:30at point-blank range.
25:32At that distance,
25:34gunnery skill
25:34was irrelevant.
25:35Physics did the rest.
25:37On December 27, 1942,
25:40flying with the 39th
25:42Fighter Squadron
25:42out of Port Moresby, New Guinea,
25:44Bong scored his
25:45first kills,
25:46a zero and an Oscar
25:48in the same engagement.
25:49He earned a silver star.
25:51He said nothing
25:52particularly memorable
25:53about it.
25:55That was the other thing
25:56about Bong.
25:56He almost never said
25:58anything memorable
25:59about anything.
26:00General George Kenney,
26:02commander of the 5th Air Force,
26:04noticed Bong early.
26:05Not because Bong was boastful
26:07or aggressive on the ground,
26:09he was neither.
26:10He was quiet,
26:11polite,
26:12and looked younger
26:13than his age.
26:13But in the air,
26:15something changed.
26:17Kenney watched
26:18this mild farm boy
26:19climb into a lightning,
26:21take off,
26:21and hunt with a precision
26:23that bordered on Erie.
26:25Here is a number
26:26that matters.
26:27In the Pacific Theater,
26:29the average American fighter pilot
26:30who survived his first combat engagement
26:32went on to fly roughly 50 missions.
26:35Of those,
26:36he might encounter enemy aircraft on 10,
26:38he might fire his guns on 5,
26:41he might hit something on 2 or 3.
26:43The mathematics of aerial combat
26:45were brutal.
26:46Most pilots never shot down
26:48a single enemy aircraft.
26:50Bong shot down 40.
26:51He did it in roughly 200 combat missions
26:54over two years,
26:55flying out of airfields
26:56carved from jungle mud
26:58in New Guinea,
26:59the Philippines,
26:59and the islands strung
27:01across the southwestern Pacific.
27:02He painted his girlfriend's face
27:04on the nose of his lightning,
27:06Marjorie Vattendal,
27:07whom he had met at a dance
27:08at Superior State Teachers College
27:10during a leave.
27:11He named the aircraft Marge.
27:13Under her portrait,
27:15the kill flags accumulated.
27:175.
27:1710.
27:1820.
27:19By April of 1944,
27:21Bong had surpassed
27:22every living American ace.
27:24Kenny promoted him to major
27:26and sent him home
27:27to instruct other pilots.
27:29But Bong came back.
27:30He always came back.
27:32He returned to the Pacific
27:34in September 1944
27:35as a gunnery training officer,
27:38a role that explicitly
27:39did not require him
27:41to fly combat missions.
27:42He flew them anyway.
27:44Voluntarily.
27:45Again and again.
27:47Eight more kills
27:49in a period
27:50when he was not even
27:51supposed to be shooting.
27:53On December 12, 1944,
27:55General Douglas MacArthur
27:57personally presented Bong
27:58with the Medal of Honor.
28:00The citation described
28:01his extraordinary courage
28:03over Balikpapan, Borneo,
28:04and the Philippines.
28:06Bong stood at attention,
28:08accepted the medal,
28:09and said very little.
28:11Five days later,
28:12on December 17,
28:14Bong scored his 40th victory,
28:16a Japanese fighter
28:18over the Philippines.
28:19And this time,
28:20Kenny did not ask.
28:22He ordered.
28:24Bong was done.
28:25Grounded.
28:26Sent home.
28:28America's ace of aces
28:29would not be allowed
28:30to die in combat.
28:32But here is what you need
28:33to hold in your mind
28:34as this story continues.
28:36Everything Bong achieved,
28:38every one of those 40 kills,
28:40was done in a P-38 Lightning.
28:42Not a Mustang.
28:44Not a Thunderbolt.
28:45A Lightning.
28:46The same aircraft
28:48sitting on the tarmac
28:49at Reckland
28:49with German crosses
28:51on its wings.
28:52The same machine
28:53that German engineers
28:54had opened up
28:54and measured
28:55and documented
28:56and quietly understood
28:57was beyond their ability
28:59to replicate.
29:00And Bong was not alone.
29:02Because while Kenny
29:03was grounding his top ace,
29:05another P-38 pilot
29:06was climbing,
29:07mission by mission,
29:09toward Bong's record.
29:10Major Thomas McGuire
29:12from Ridgewood, New Jersey
29:14had 38 confirmed victories,
29:16all in Lightnings,
29:18all in the Pacific.
29:19And he was not the kind of man
29:21who accepted second place.
29:23Where Bong was quiet,
29:24McGuire was intense.
29:26Where Bong flew
29:27with the patience of a hunter,
29:29McGuire flew
29:30with the urgency
29:31of a competitor.
29:32He knew the number,
29:3338.
29:35Two more
29:36and he would tie Bong.
29:37Three
29:38and he would own the record.
29:40Kenny had briefly grounded
29:41McGuire too
29:42in late December
29:43to let Bong finish his run.
29:45But once Bong was safely home,
29:47Kenny unleashed McGuire.
29:49On the morning of January 7th, 1945,
29:52McGuire led a flight
29:54of four P-38L models
29:55over the waters
29:56between the Philippine islands
29:57of Negros and Mindoro.
29:59They were at 1,500 feet.
30:02Low.
30:03Too low for the kind of flying
30:04the P-38 was designed for.
30:06High-altitude,
30:07high-speed,
30:08energy tactics.
30:09Dive,
30:10shoot,
30:11climb,
30:11repeat.
30:12At 1,500 feet,
30:14there was no room to dive.
30:16No room for error.
30:18Captain Edwin Weaver,
30:19McGuire's wingman,
30:20spotted a single Japanese fighter
30:22climbing toward them.
30:23Then a second.
30:25McGuire's flight
30:26turned to engage.
30:27And in the next 60 seconds,
30:29the race for the greatest
30:30American ace record
30:31ended in the worst
30:32possible way.
30:34McGuire,
30:3538 kills,
30:36too short of the record,
30:37broke into a hard turn
30:39to cover a wingman.
30:40His P-38,
30:41still carrying its
30:42external drop tanks
30:43because he had not
30:44taken the time to jettison them,
30:46could not sustain the turn
30:47at that altitude
30:48and that speed.
30:49The added weight
30:50and drag were too much.
30:51The lightning stalled.
30:53The nose dropped.
30:54At 1,500 feet,
30:55there was nothing below him
30:57but jungle.
30:58Thomas McGuire hit the ground
30:59on the island of Negros.
31:01He was 25 years old.
31:03And back in Burbank, California,
31:05at the Lockheed factory
31:06where 10,000 P-38s
31:07had been built,
31:08a man named Kelly Johnson
31:10was already working
31:11on the next problem.
31:12A problem that would explain,
31:14once and for all,
31:15why the German pilot's words
31:16at Recklin
31:17were not about an airplane
31:18at all.
31:19In the spring of 1944,
31:21at a Luftwaffe fighter base
31:23in northern France,
31:24a formation of captured
31:25Allied aircraft
31:26landed in a sequence
31:27that would have been
31:28unthinkable a year earlier.
31:29A Spitfire?
31:31A Thunderbolt?
31:32And at the rear
31:33of the formation,
31:34its twin booms
31:35and central nacelle,
31:37unmistakable
31:38against the overcast sky.
31:39A P-38 lightning,
31:41wearing German crosses
31:43and the code T-9
31:44on its fuselage.
31:46The unit was called
31:47the Wanda Circus Rosarius,
31:49the traveling circus.
31:51Led by Hauptmann Theodor Rosarius,
31:54it was one of the strangest
31:55outfits in the Luftwaffe.
31:56Its mission was simple
31:58and deeply disturbing.
32:01Rosarius and his pilots
32:02flew captured Allied aircraft
32:03from base to base
32:04across occupied Europe,
32:06showing them to front-line
32:08German fighter squadrons.
32:09The purpose was education.
32:11Learn the enemy's strengths,
32:13find his weaknesses,
32:15develop tactics
32:16to exploit them.
32:17The German fighter pilots
32:19who gathered around
32:20the P-38 that afternoon
32:21had been fighting lightnings
32:23over the Mediterranean
32:24and, increasingly,
32:25over France.
32:26They knew the aircraft
32:27from a distance,
32:29the silhouette,
32:30the sound of two Allison's
32:31at full power,
32:32the tight stream of tracers
32:34from the nose,
32:35but they had never touched one.
32:38Never sat in the cockpit,
32:39never looked behind
32:40the instrument panel.
32:41Rosarius invited them
32:42to climb in.
32:43What they found
32:44confirmed what Reckland's
32:45engineers had already documented
32:47and added something worse.
32:49Because by the spring of 1944,
32:51the P-38 they were sitting in
32:53was not the same aircraft
32:54Germany had first captured
32:55in 1943.
32:57It was better.
32:59Measurably,
33:00demonstrably,
33:00systematically better.
33:02And this was the part
33:04that no German pilot
33:05standing on that French airfield
33:06could explain.
33:07The P-38 that had first
33:09entered combat
33:10over North Africa
33:11in late 1942
33:12had a problem
33:13that killed pilots.
33:15In a high-speed dive,
33:16approaching speeds
33:17no propeller-driven fighter
33:18had ever reached,
33:20the air flowing over the wings
33:21hit a wall.
33:22Compressibility,
33:23the engineers called it.
33:25The aircraft's tail
33:26would begin to shake.
33:27The nose would tuck under,
33:29steepening the dive.
33:30The controls would lock.
33:32The pilot,
33:33pulling back on the yoke
33:34with everything he had,
33:36could not recover.
33:37He rode the aircraft
33:38into the ground.
33:39Or, if he was lucky,
33:41into denser air
33:42at lower altitude
33:42where the controls
33:43softened enough
33:44to let him pull out.
33:45if there was
33:47enough altitude left.
33:48Some pilots died this way.
33:50Some barely survived.
33:52And the word spread
33:53through P-38 squadrons
33:55in Europe,
33:55do not dive too steep,
33:57do not build too much speed,
33:59or the lightning will kill you
34:01before the Germans
34:01get the chance.
34:03This was a real weakness.
34:05German pilots knew it.
34:07Heinz-Behr and others
34:08exploited it.
34:09Dive away from a P-38,
34:11knowing the American
34:12could not safely follow
34:13into a steep pursuit.
34:15But here is what happened next,
34:17and this is the fact
34:18that matters more
34:19than any performance number
34:21or combat statistic
34:22in this entire story.
34:24Lockheed fixed it.
34:25Not in the next model.
34:27Not in the next generation.
34:29In the same production run.
34:31While P-38s were rolling off
34:33the assembly line in Burbank
34:35at a rate that would eventually reach
34:36100 aircraft per month,
34:39Lockheed's engineers,
34:40led by a 34-year-old
34:42named Kelly Johnson,
34:43who had designed the aircraft
34:44in the first place,
34:46identified the problem,
34:47tested solutions,
34:49and introduced a small
34:50electrically operated
34:51die flap
34:52on the lower surface
34:53of each wing
34:54that broke up
34:55the compressibility shockwave
34:56and gave the pilot
34:58back his controls.
34:59The P-38J model,
35:01entering service
35:02in mid-1943,
35:04carried those die flaps.
35:05It also carried
35:07a redesigned intercooler system,
35:09moved from the wing leading edge
35:11to a chin-mounted scoop
35:12beneath each engine,
35:13that solved an overheating problem
35:15that had plagued earlier models
35:17in the warm air of the Pacific.
35:19And the L model,
35:21arriving in 1944,
35:23added hydraulically boosted ailerons
35:25that transformed the lightning's roll rate
35:27from sluggish to violent.
35:29The faster the aircraft moved,
35:31the faster it rolled.
35:32A pilot who learned the trick
35:34could snap into a maneuver
35:36so sudden
35:36it could knock his head
35:38against the canopy frame.
35:39Each improvement arrived
35:41within months
35:41of the problem being identified.
35:43Each one was incorporated
35:45into the production line
35:46without slowing output.
35:48And each one made the tactics
35:49that German pilots
35:50had developed
35:51against earlier P-38s
35:52partially or completely obsolete.
35:55This is what the German pilots'
35:57words at Reckland
35:57were truly about.
35:58Not the aircraft
36:00as it existed
36:00on the day he examined it,
36:02but the system that produced it.
36:03A system that could identify a flaw,
36:06engineer a solution,
36:07manufacture it at scale,
36:09and deliver it to the front line
36:10before the enemy
36:11had finished adapting
36:12to the previous version.
36:14Germany had no equivalent process.
36:16German aircraft improved
36:18through redesign,
36:19a new variant,
36:20a new subtype,
36:21often requiring retooling,
36:23retraining,
36:24months of delay.
36:25The Americans improved
36:27through iteration,
36:28midstream,
36:30without breaking stride.
36:31By the end of 1944,
36:34Lockheed had built
36:35just over 10,000 P-38s.
36:37Think about that number
36:39in context.
36:4010,000 twin-engine fighters,
36:42each requiring
36:43two Allison engines,
36:45two turbo superchargers,
36:47thousands of precision components,
36:49produced by a single company
36:50in a single city,
36:52while that same industrial base
36:54simultaneously produced
36:56tens of thousands
36:57of Mustangs,
36:58Thunderbolts,
36:59Corsairs,
37:00Hellcats,
37:01Flying Fortresses,
37:03Liberators,
37:03and the B-29 Superfortress,
37:06the most complex aircraft
37:07ever built to that date.
37:09Germany,
37:10in the same period,
37:11was losing factories
37:12to bombing,
37:13losing skilled workers
37:15to conscription,
37:16losing raw materials
37:17to blockade,
37:18and building aircraft
37:20with slave labor
37:21from concentration camps.
37:22Labor that sabotaged
37:24production whenever it could,
37:25because the people
37:26building Messerschmitts
37:27and Focke-Wulfs
37:28were the same people
37:30Germany was trying
37:30to exterminate.
37:32The German pilots
37:33standing around
37:33that captured lightning
37:34in France
37:35understood none
37:36of these production numbers.
37:37They did not need to.
37:39They could feel the answer
37:40in the throttle,
37:41in the rudder pedals,
37:43in the way the canopy latch
37:44clicked shut
37:45with the precision
37:46their own aircraft
37:47had stopped delivering
37:48two years ago.
37:49And in October of 1944,
37:52the Luftwaffe
37:53was about to receive
37:54one more P-38.
37:55this one delivered
37:57not by a compass error
37:58or a battlefield capture,
38:00but by an American officer
38:01who walked away
38:02from his own country
38:03and handed them
38:04the evidence voluntarily.
38:06On October 13, 1944,
38:09a brand new Lockheed F-5E,
38:12the photographic
38:13reconnaissance variant
38:13of the P-38 Lightning,
38:15unarmed,
38:16fitted with cameras
38:17instead of guns,
38:18lifted off
38:19from Pomigliano Airfield
38:21near Naples.
38:21The pilot had no orders,
38:24no mission,
38:25no authorization
38:25to be in that cockpit.
38:282nd Lieutenant
38:28Martin James Monti,
38:3023,
38:30from St. Louis, Missouri,
38:32had stolen the aircraft.
38:33What happened next
38:34is one of the strangest episodes
38:36of the entire war.
38:38Monti flew north,
38:39crossed the front lines,
38:40and landed
38:40at a German-controlled airfield
38:42outside Milan.
38:43He climbed out,
38:44surrendered to the
38:45Luftwaffe ground crew,
38:46and announced
38:46that he was defecting.
38:48The Germans
38:48did not believe him.
38:49They put him
38:50in a prisoner of war camp.
38:52But Monti was persistent.
38:54He was also,
38:55as it turned out,
38:55sincere.
38:56The son of Italian
38:57and German immigrants
38:58raised in a fiercely
39:00anti-communist household,
39:01Monti had become convinced
39:02that America
39:03was fighting the wrong enemy.
39:05He told his captors,
39:06and would later tell
39:07anyone who listened,
39:08that the real threat
39:09was the Soviet Union,
39:10and that Germany
39:11and America
39:11should be allies.
39:13The Luftwaffe did
39:14what the Luftwaffe
39:15always did
39:15with a captured aircraft.
39:17They examined it.
39:18They cataloged it.
39:19They gave it
39:20a German code,
39:22T9MK.
39:23And they sent it
39:24to the evaluation pipeline.
39:26But this P-38
39:27was different
39:28from the one
39:28that had arrived
39:29from Sardinia
39:2916 months earlier.
39:31That first aircraft,
39:33the P-38G
39:34that Tondi had flown,
39:35the one that ended up
39:36at Recklin
39:37as T9XB,
39:38was a mid-war model.
39:40Good,
39:41but not the best
39:42the Americans had.
39:43It had suffered
39:44from Italian fuel,
39:46from rough handling,
39:47from the accumulated damage
39:48of being flown
39:49by people
39:49who had no manual
39:50for it.
39:51And it had crashed
39:52before the Luftwaffe's
39:53best test pilot
39:54could even take it
39:55into the air.
39:57Monty's F-5E
39:58was something else.
39:59It was a late
40:00production aircraft,
40:01almost factory fresh,
40:03serial number
40:054423725.
40:07It had the latest
40:08Allison engines,
40:09the improved
40:10intercooler system,
40:11the hydraulically
40:12boosted ailerons.
40:14Every upgrade
40:14that Lockheed
40:15had introduced
40:16over two years
40:17of relentless iteration
40:18was built
40:19into this airframe.
40:20It was,
40:21in effect,
40:22the finished product,
40:23the P-38
40:24as Kelly Johnson
40:25had always intended
40:26it to be.
40:27And the Germans
40:28who examined it
40:28in the autumn
40:29of 1944
40:30were not the same men
40:32who had examined
40:32the first lightning
40:33in the autumn
40:34of 1943.
40:35They were a year
40:36more desperate,
40:37a year more aware
40:38of what was coming.
40:40The Luftwaffe
40:41was burning through pilots
40:42faster than it could train them.
40:43Fuel was rationed
40:45so severely
40:45that new fighter pilots
40:47were arriving
40:47at front-line squadrons
40:49with fewer than
40:49a hundred hours
40:50of total flight time,
40:52barely enough
40:52to take off and land,
40:54let alone fight.
40:55Factories that had
40:56once produced Messerschmitts
40:58with Bavarian precision
40:59were now staffed
41:00by forced laborers
41:01who hid broken tools
41:02inside engine cowlings
41:04and reversed
41:05electrical connections
41:06in the hope
41:06that the aircraft
41:07would fail in flight.
41:08And into this
41:09collapsing system
41:10arrived the machine
41:11that was the opposite
41:12of collapse.
41:13A machine that was clean,
41:15tight, finished, standardized.
41:18A machine that had
41:18clearly rolled off
41:19an assembly line
41:20where no one
41:21had sabotaged the wiring,
41:23where the aluminum
41:23was not recycled
41:24from bombed-out airframes,
41:26where the turbo
41:27superchargers
41:27were not hand-fitted
41:29because the factory
41:30tolerances had slipped
41:31beyond specification.
41:33Now, go back
41:34to the words.
41:35The assessment
41:35that had traveled up
41:36from Recklin
41:37through the Luftwaffe's
41:38technical channels.
41:39The words that had
41:40landed on desks
41:41in Berlin
41:41where men
41:42understood what
41:43they implied.
41:44Those words
41:45had described
41:45an aircraft
41:46that combined
41:46capabilities
41:47no German design
41:48had attempted.
41:49Range,
41:50firepower,
41:51altitude performance,
41:52survivability,
41:53manufacturing quality,
41:54integrated into
41:55a single airframe
41:56produced at scale,
41:58improved continuously.
41:59But in September
42:011943,
42:02when those words
42:03were first written,
42:04they could still be read
42:05as a technical observation,
42:06an engineer's note.
42:07A professional assessment
42:09of a capable enemy aircraft.
42:11Interesting,
42:12but not decisive.
42:13Germany still had
42:14the Messerschmitt 262 jet
42:16in development.
42:17Germany still had
42:18experienced pilots.
42:19Germany could still
42:20tell itself
42:21that quality and training
42:22would offset
42:23American quantity.
42:24Fourteen months later,
42:26with Monty's pristine
42:27F-5E sitting in a hangar
42:28next to aircraft
42:29held together
42:30with improvised patches,
42:31those same words
42:32read like an obituary.
42:34Because the P-38
42:35was not the problem,
42:36the P-38 was the symptom.
42:39The problem was
42:40the country behind it.
42:41A country that could
42:42build 10,000 of these machines
42:44and treat each one
42:45as disposable.
42:46A country where
42:47a rogue lieutenant
42:48could walk onto an airfield
42:50and steal a brand new
42:51twin-engine aircraft
42:52because there were
42:53so many of them
42:54that nobody noticed
42:55one was missing
42:55until the pilot
42:56failed to return.
42:57A country that could
42:59lose P-38s
43:00to accidents,
43:01to weather,
43:02to training mishaps,
43:03to combat,
43:05and replace them
43:06faster than the
43:06Luftwaffe
43:07could replace
43:08a single Messerschmitt.
43:09That was what
43:10the German pilots'
43:12words meant.
43:12That was why
43:13they stunned.
43:14Not because the P-38
43:16was the best fighter
43:17in the world.
43:18By 1944,
43:19it arguably was not.
43:21The P-51 Mustang
43:23was faster,
43:24more maneuverable,
43:25and had longer range
43:27on a single engine.
43:28The P-38 was being phased
43:30out of the European theater
43:31entirely, replaced by Mustangs
43:34for bomber escort duty.
43:36But the P-38 did not need
43:38to be the best.
43:39It needed to be good enough
43:40and produced in numbers
43:42that Germany could not match,
43:44improved at a pace
43:45Germany could not sustain,
43:47and flown by men
43:49who were trained in a system
43:50that turned farm boys
43:51and shop clerks
43:52into combat pilots
43:54in 18 months.
43:55The verdict was not
43:57that America had built
43:58a better airplane.
43:59The verdict was
44:00that America had built
44:02a better civilization
44:03for building airplanes,
44:04and nothing Germany did,
44:06no jet engine,
44:07no wonder weapon,
44:08no desperate reorganization
44:10of production,
44:11was going to close that gap.
44:13Not now,
44:14not ever.
44:15Martin Monti,
44:16for his part,
44:17went to Berlin,
44:18adopted his mother's maiden name,
44:20Weithaupt,
44:21and began broadcasting propaganda
44:23for the German state radio.
44:24He joined the Waffen-SS.
44:26He wrote leaflets
44:28urging American soldiers
44:29to stop fighting.
44:30He believed,
44:31with absolute sincerity,
44:33that he had chosen
44:34the right side.
44:35History would disagree,
44:37but we will come back to him,
44:38because there is one more thing
44:40to tell
44:40about what happened
44:42to the men
44:42who flew the lightning,
44:43and what happened
44:44to the man
44:45who flew it last.
44:46On August 6, 1945,
44:49at Lockheed Air Terminal
44:51in Burbank, California,
44:53Major Richard Bong
44:53strapped into the cockpit
44:55of a P-80 shooting star,
44:57America's first operational jet fighter.
44:59It was a routine acceptance test flight.
45:02Bong was a test pilot now.
45:04He had survived 200 combat missions,
45:0740 aerial victories,
45:08and every attempt
45:10by the Japanese Empire
45:11to kill him.
45:12He was 24 years old.
45:14He had married Marge,
45:16the real Marge,
45:17Marjorie Vattendal,
45:19the girl whose portrait
45:20had ridden on the nose
45:21of his lightning
45:21across the Pacific,
45:23five months earlier.
45:24The P-80's engine
45:26failed on takeoff.
45:27The jet lost power
45:29at barely 200 feet.
45:31Bong rolled the aircraft,
45:32attempted to eject,
45:33and cleared the cockpit,
45:35but he was too low.
45:36His parachute
45:37did not have time to open.
45:39He struck the ground
45:40on the north end
45:41of the runway
45:41at a construction site
45:43on Oxnard Street.
45:44America's Ace of Aces
45:46was killed instantly.
45:486,000 miles away,
45:50at that same hour,
45:51a B-29 named Enola Gay
45:53dropped an atomic bomb
45:55on Hiroshima.
45:57The news of Bong's death
45:58was buried
45:59under the largest headline
46:00in the history of warfare.
46:02Most Americans
46:03did not learn
46:04that their greatest fighter pilot
46:05had died until days later,
46:07if at all.
46:09Thomas McGuire
46:10received the Medal of Honor
46:11posthumously.
46:12The airfield
46:13at Fort Dix, New Jersey,
46:14was renamed
46:15McGuire Air Force Base
46:17in his honor.
46:18He had been 25
46:19when his P-38
46:20stalled over the jungles
46:22of Negros.
46:2338 victories.
46:24Too short.
46:26Martin Monti
46:27returned to Allied lines
46:29in May of 1945
46:30wearing a Waffen SS uniform.
46:33He told interrogators
46:35that Italian partisans
46:36had given it to him
46:37to help him escape.
46:39The Army,
46:40unaware of the full scope
46:41of his defection,
46:42court-martialed him
46:43for desertion
46:44and theft
46:45of the reconnaissance aircraft.
46:46He received
46:47a 15-year suspended sentence.
46:50Then, remarkably,
46:51he was allowed
46:52to re-enlist.
46:53It was not until 1948,
46:56when the full extent
46:57of his propaganda work
46:58for the Nazis
46:59was uncovered,
47:00that the government
47:01arrested him again.
47:02This time,
47:03the charge was treason.
47:04He pleaded guilty.
47:0625 years
47:07in federal prison.
47:08He was paroled
47:09in 1960.
47:10He died in the year 2000
47:13at 78 in obscurity.
47:16The captured P-38
47:17at Recklin,
47:18T-9XB,
47:19the lightning
47:20that had arrived
47:21from Sardinia
47:21through Italy,
47:22the aircraft
47:23that had been displayed
47:24at the September 1943 air show,
47:26did not survive the war.
47:28Allied bombers
47:29struck Recklin
47:30beginning in early 1944,
47:32and the test center
47:33was progressively destroyed.
47:35The aircraft's
47:36exact fate
47:36is unrecorded.
47:37It was likely reduced
47:39to aluminum fragments
47:40in one of the raids,
47:41alongside dozens of other
47:42German and captured
47:43allied aircraft
47:44that had once been
47:45the pride of the Luftwaffe's
47:47evaluation program.
47:49Hans-Werner Lerke,
47:50the chief test pilot
47:51at Recklin,
47:52who had flown
47:52125 aircraft types
47:54without crashing
47:55a single one,
47:56never got the chance
47:57to fly the P-38.
47:59It was destroyed
48:00before he could take it up.
48:01But Lerke flew
48:02nearly everything else,
48:04the B-17,
48:05the Thunderbolt,
48:06the Mustang,
48:07the Lancaster,
48:08the Tempest.
48:09He survived the war.
48:11On April 23, 1945,
48:1415 days before
48:15the German surrender,
48:16he flew a Dornier
48:18D-0-335
48:19from Recklin
48:20on what may have been
48:21the last test flight
48:22conducted by the Luftwaffe.
48:24He wrote his memoirs.
48:26He never crashed.
48:28And now,
48:29go back.
48:30Go back to September 19, 1943.
48:33A lakeside airfield
48:35in Mecklenburg.
48:36A row of captured aircraft
48:38in the morning light.
48:39And at the end of the line,
48:40a machine with twin booms
48:42and a central nacelle
48:43and counter-rotating propellers
48:45and five weapons
48:46clustered in the nose
48:47where the designer
48:48had simply erased
48:50the convergence problem
48:51instead of solving it.
48:52A German pilot
48:53stands beside it.
48:54He has flown Messerschmitt's.
48:56He has flown
48:57on Focke-Wulfs.
48:58He knows what good engineering
49:00feels like in the air.
49:01He climbs into the cockpit.
49:03He touches the throttle quadrant.
49:05He runs his eyes
49:06across instruments
49:07that are clearly labeled,
49:09logically arranged,
49:10lit for night flying.
49:11He looks behind the panel
49:13and sees wiring
49:14that is color-coded
49:15and bundled
49:15with a standardization
49:16his own factories
49:17stopped achieving
49:18two years ago.
49:20He knows,
49:21as an engineer
49:22and as a pilot,
49:23exactly what he is looking at.
49:25He is looking at a country.
49:26Not an airplane.
49:28A country.
49:29A country that designed
49:31this machine in 1937,
49:33flew the prototype
49:34in 1939,
49:35lost it in a crash,
49:37rebuilt it,
49:38tested it,
49:39improved it,
49:41mass-produced it,
49:42shipped it across
49:43two oceans,
49:44used it to kill
49:45an admiral
49:45and build an ace
49:46and dominate
49:47a theater of war,
49:48and then,
49:50when it was no longer
49:51the best,
49:51replaced it with
49:52something better
49:53and kept building
49:54anyway.
49:5510,000 of them.
49:57Each one interchangeable,
49:59repairable,
50:00disposable.
50:01That was what stunned him.
50:03Not the speed.
50:05Not the range.
50:06Not the guns.
50:07The realization
50:08that this aircraft
50:09was not Germany's problem.
50:11Germany's problem
50:12was that this was
50:13one of a dozen types.
50:14All this good.
50:16All produced simultaneously.
50:18All flowing from
50:19a factory system
50:20that had not existed
50:21five years earlier
50:22and now outproduced
50:23the entire axis combined.
50:25His words,
50:27quiet,
50:27technical,
50:28precise,
50:29did not read
50:30like a compliment.
50:31They read like a man
50:32who understood,
50:33before most of his countrymen,
50:35that this war
50:36was already decided.
50:37Not in the skies
50:38over Berlin
50:39or the beaches
50:40of Normandy.
50:41In the factories
50:41of Burbank and Detroit
50:43and Evansville
50:44and Willow Run.
50:45In the turbine shops
50:47of General Electric
50:48and the engine plants
50:49of Allison.
50:50In a civilization
50:51that had turned
50:52engineering into democracy
50:53and production
50:54into destiny.
50:56The P-38 lightning
50:57was the proof.
50:58And the proof
50:59was inescapable.
51:01Thank you for watching
51:02this all the way through.
51:03If this story
51:04stayed with you,
51:05if Bong and Maguire
51:07and the men
51:07who flew the lightning
51:08across two oceans
51:09meant something to you,
51:10I would appreciate it
51:11if you hit the like button.
51:13It is a small thing,
51:14but it is how stories
51:15like this find the people
51:17who care about them.
51:18Subscribe if you have
51:19not already,
51:20and turn on the bell
51:20so you never miss one.
51:22I would love to know,
51:23where are you watching
51:24from today?
51:25And if someone in your family
51:26served in the Second World War,
51:28a grandfather,
51:29a great uncle,
51:31a grandmother
51:31who built the aircraft
51:32or ran the radios,
51:34tell me about them
51:35in the comments.
51:36Their stories matter,
51:37every single one.
51:39I was going to tell you about it,
51:39to celebrate the earth,
51:39and I've been published