Anybody ever read "Forked-Tail Devil" by Martin Caiden? Late model P-38s did well in Europe but the 8th AF had already decided to go with the P-51.

My grandpa flew P-38s in the pacific. He swore it was the best plane for that theater, blasting mitsubishis and diving away when outnumbered. He fought zero's and swore the P-38 could turn slightly better on account of its superior horsepower. Life got you down? Curl up with a good book and escape the real world for a bit. And maybe learn something new. When times were toughest I escaped into literature and its the best decision I ever made. These are my favorite books, all available on Amazon: - Lightstrike by John Zeleznik - Infinite Worlds by Vincent DiFate - Beyond the Horizon by John Harris - Great Fighter Jets of the Galaxy 1 by Tim Gibson

The artwork on these things is unreal good. The detail and depth pf color are fabulous.

Nice graphics, but for the load out on the P-38J/L’s the 3 “flute” rocket launchers on each side of the central nacelle were not used in Europe. They were only used in the FEAF campaign (Burma/Indochina). The “Christmas Tree” hard point under each outer wing was used on J/Ls everywhere else.

My father was the mess sgt. for the 432nd Squadron 475th FG 5th Army Airforce. An all P-38 outfit, they formed up at Amberly Field Australia mi May 1943. By the time that the war ended this group had accounted for over 550 Japanese aircraft in ariel combat. Bong was the top ace with 40 kills. The next 2 aces in theater were Major Thomas McQuire, Col. Charles MacDonald. McQuire was the skipper of the 431Squadron, and Col. McDonald was the group commander. Col. Lindberg flew with the group on 2 occasions and is credited with 2 Zeros.

The P38 was slow getting into or out of a turn, but once in a turn could get inside most other fighters - source Robert Johnson "Thunderbolt!"

P-38 so easy to identify by friend and enemy alike.

Every time I think I’m out I get pulled back in!

Turn fighting with a P38? - Neglecting to climb and dive? "snicker"

Quite some footage there. I was totally immersed, the ending really puts it home how quickly life can be lost for those pilots.

Moral of the story: never take a FW190 head on.

@4:25 Luftwaffe pilot: 'praise Odin! Valhalla can wait.'

Great video, shocking ending. Liked the red on the Lightning, a lot like Bong's. Looking forward to the next one.

Not the way I wanted it to end...wanted the guys in the white hats to come out on top, but that was fantastic!

it appeared to me that the FW 190 were flown by 10 years old. Great cinematic though.

1:58 the loadouts drop makes me goosebump Because the P-38 know it is going to tough fight

Good video, ending " Well" it happens, the P38 driver should of grabbed altitude and figured out his situation, especially when there's no wingman, fuel status and mission failure. RTB !!!

It is a known fact by military aviation historians that the P38 was most vulnerable in low speed turns against single engine fighters like the FIAT G55 Centauro. I don't know about the FW 190 however. It seems to me that the 190 D was the only version that was not well suited to a turning fight due to its elongated fuselage. It was a high altitude interceptor along with the Ta 152.

Chuck Yeager flight tested the Dora-9 and he reckoned it was the best piston-engine aircraft of WW2. The Focke Wulf couldn't turn as tightly as a Spitfire but it could turn more acutely, ie more suddenly. The point being, other very capable single-engine aircraft had their hands completely full when fighting the Focke Wulfs, like the Spitfire MK V in 1941, so I don't rate the chances of P-38s very highly unless they had the element of surprise themselves. They did well in the Pacific because they had the attributes that Japanese aircraft lacked, speed, armour and heavy armament from the very beginning. P-38 was specifically designed to do 400mph in level flight. Late war Zeros couldn't even manage that.

This guy is so talented, I bet he dabbles in card tricks

Wow- awesome dude.

At least he went down fighting and took a few 190's with him. The first P-38 that got shot down never fired a shot and didn't even jettison his rocket pods.

Stunning video. So realistic. Great work!

Movies can always make the impossible seem easy - a 190 could eat a squadron of p38's for lunch.

Great video. Good job showing both sides as competent.

Well done Sir, war is hell!!

I want a p38 so badly

When there were no FW 190s left in the sky, farmers and workers in the fields were shot at and killed by American pilots.

Great video. I enjoyed this very much.

a realistic story

Didn’t realize it saw action over Europe. Thx.

The problem of course with the ending is that a fighter - like the FW190 - with wing mounted guns had them indexed or zeroed to converge at about 250 yards. The P38 with nose mounted .50 cals could get the max effective range from them which is 2,000 yards. So in a head to head confrontation the P38 could have put rounds on the FW190 for 1750 yards of flying before the FW190 was within effective range. The likely outcome would have been the opposite of the one depicted.

Awesome graphic’s!!

Awesome graphics this game has

Great video. Had some holes in aircraft authenticity, but still fun to watch!

Great video!

How can the P38 out manoeuvre a F109? Not believable.

great job!!! nice video

I enjoy being in the cockpit of a p38. great platform, lots of ammo, plenty of power, fast climb, not as manoeuvrable as Fw, 109 but men died in those coffins7 when they were on fire, what a way to die. P 38 had lower rates of being shot out of the sky. what an aircraft, superchargers silver ss al. & the power was there you could feel the acceleration on takeoff. sadly for those who died.

Like your discipline with shooting. Did you use the air screws to help make a tighter turn? Great story line BTW ;-))

In RL they would have sent some escort fighter cover for two P-38s headed to do ground attack. Probably a couple Mustangs or Jugs. Or a couple un-laden P-38s.

Don't believe this at all. 2 P38's getting jumped by 4 190's....how does the P38 get a target to shoot at?

Water methanol injection was added later on to cool the engine and boost power later on. It made the 190 more capable.

Nice👊🏿

The FW 190’s was one of the better fighters in the European theater. Keep your head on a swivel!

and when the lead pilot loses his wingman, he gets busted down to being a wingman. tactics are to fly in tandem, when the trailing plane (wingman) comes under fire, the lead loops around to take out the wingman's attacker. then there is the Immelmann.

I've read many testimonials that a big weakness of the P-38 was its complexity. If a P-38 pilot got bounced it took at least 30 sec or so to get the plane reconfigured from fuel conserving cruise to combat ready. Props, mixtures, throttles, ordinance or drop tank jettison, a lot of stuff to reconfigure and easy to screw up. Forget something in the heat of battle and you'd lose one or both engines due to power setting mismanagement.

I bought this game in 2004 or 2005 it was hours of missions the hardest dogfights were the Zeros in the Pacific the first disc, they could out turn anything the US had, after watching learning about how we fought them you had to get them below you and dive down to get them and run and try again the F4U Cosair could take some hits and keep in the fight if you could hit the Zero even slightly they would go down...

i don't think P38s had a chance to survive dogfight against equally fast but more agile German fighters. overall, the lightnings were not too successful in europe, unlike pacific (and that is why they've been replaced by p51s and p47s).

When known that enemy is directly in front. Start firing a few blasts 1st to make him lose his aim or u may be able to take him out 1st.

Trying a turning fight in a P-38 against German single-seater is not good. Zoom is your best option. Look at videos on here of Robin Olds.

it's the one you don't see that kills you

I always wanted to see a jet powered version of this candermeran design. I always thought that mounting the cockpit at the center of gravity would make for higher g force toleances and the nacelles would take the brunt of it. Of course youd have to have each engine turbines to spin counter each other to negate the torque or youd have bias in one direction. I invisioned a buck Rogers star fighter type design with 3d vector thurstering, looking like an Sr 71 with the cockpit mounted inwards where the nacelles meet the wings and an egis radar array mounted along the front pioleted nacelle. Just my thoughts.

These animations are so good

This was a shocking video. Seeing the pilot get all those kills then.... black. kinda made me jump.

"There is little wonder that loss rates were relatively high and the kill to loss ratio was below that of the P-47's which could be massed by the hundreds (700 P-47's flying escort was not uncommon). The Luftwaffe quickly learned to position the bulk of their fighters just beyond the range of the Thunderbolts and repeatedly flew aggressive small unit ambushes against the handful of P-38s tied to close escort and thus denied the freedom to engage at will." AIR POWER AUSTRALIA site

Nooooo.. that's so sad But damn its cool

Doubt the outcome: the Dora outclassed the P-38.

Such a tragic ending....

on the game itself, are the engine sounds more realistic or would this be what I get if I was to download the game? I have a good set of desk top speakers and a subwoofer they are plugged into but this engine sounds are a bit anemic.

Good fight

when the p38 is watching his buddy go down "GET OUT, GET OUT OF THERE " "STUCK, MY LEG IS STUCK" "HURRRYYYY'" "AHHHHH (BOOM)" -silence- "ne P38 Ich habe eine auf mich, die eine Sicherungskopie anfordert" "COME HERE U SOB" (DAT DAT DAT) "AHHHH" -breathes- wakes up look of shock "im commin lord im commin" (boom)

Great graphics

Bravo to you my friend ...you do the BEST videos!

I avoid headons, only as a last result if I'm lower than enemy

I ❤️ P-38’s. Two engine Reliability + Power. Single wing speed + maneuverability. Center cockpit visibility.

Great vídeo!! 👍🏻👍🏻 Fuc. king dramatic, though....

How did you get that gunsight? Where can I get it?

That's not very realistic, if the germana are not detected their first sttack should be lethal.

He should have headed home after losing the wingman and revenged for him. Shouldn't turn to fight the chasing Fw190.

Good video, thank you for sharing. Thumbs up~John

P38J/L were a far more reliable plane. Which looks like this video shows. They turned quite tightly and competitive roll. Only issue was a limited dive speed close to there top speed. However took twice as long to be a competitive fighter pilot. Having 2 sets of controls made it quite busy. Was though to quickly change from Cruise to combat power.

If you could own and operate a late 1944 production Lightning, or a Dora model 190, which would you choose? Why? -🔼

5:30 I felt that

Знатно, лови лайк

Did I see TWO aircrew bail out of a single seat FW-190?

This and dcs are horrors games lol. One minute your cruising along the next minute your on fire spinning or eating lead. Or perhaps a missle right in the cockpit.

D model F.W. were about 50 mph. Faster than A model 190's ,good looking Video ,but maybe doubting some of Aircraft movements at 300 plus mph.

Some engine noise and gunfire sounds would make the video more realistic.

I would have tried using the rockets on the enemy fighters.

he should have climb and hit the road to home

Did that really happened during ww2 or it is just a short movie story?

I understand the Lightning was withdrawn from the European theater of war after the war in North Africa was concluded as it was too lightweight to withstand the canon and machine gun fire of German fighters. The Thunderbolt and Mustang were substituted in its place as the Thunderbolt was a great attack warplane against German tanks, artillery and infantry. The Mustang had great range, speed and fire power for strafing and long range bomber escort missions. They were used with great effect in the Pacific theater.

Gee......those FW-190's sure had long engines..... and a lot of exhaust stacks....! (insert rolling eyes here...)

A merciful end compared to those burning boys.

Super Socket is useful but it doesn’t replace ALL Tools.

and thats why head on passes are ill advised. i actively avoid them whenever possible, opting to climb or dive situationally to get out of the other plane's line of fire as quickly as possible and set up a two circle engagement that i can then use to my advantage. i'll even deliberately put myself on the defensive knowing i can out turn a 190 at the altitudes i typically fly at just to avoid a head on pass. so far in my normandy career ive done only one head on pass where i actually fired at my target and managed to kill him and that was because i was already below his line of fire and im not even sure he knew i was there to begin with. other than that though, i avoid head ons like the plague i think history inflates the frequency with which head on passes between fighters really happened because of 1) the luftwaffe's own admission that they used head on attacks against heavy bombers and 2) because of isolated fighter pilot reports of going head on with enemy fighters with very little context surrounding the tactical situation that may have made those passes unavoidable. being that the latter reason generally results in more dramatic accounts of air combat in ww2, these instances get highlighted more than other more common encounters and lead to an inflated image of head on passes being common whereas the truth is really the opposite: in most cases pilots were either attacked tail on or were the ones doing the attacking from a position of advantage over the enemy fighters and therefore on the scale of the overall war, head on passes between fighters were something of a rarity. just wanted to add that bit of context, otherwise, good video. more p38 content please!

Well, what do you expect if you keep turning into the guy's line of fire and staying almost level? One of those FWs could have left the P38 pointed at nothing and got behind him. How not to do anything much, and do it badly.

The Germans were not impressed with the P-38

Oooh a cinematic! It's great! But hella sad...

SEEMS LOCKHEED COULD COME UP WITH A HEATER FOR COLD CLIMATES P38 WAS A BEAST IN THE PACIFIC P 51 BEAST IN EUROPE GREAT AIRCRAFT

Whatever your guess work might tell you the p38 flew against more nimble ijn and ija aircraft with two and three times the range of bf 109g and fw 19od. Incidently the p38 was the only fighter in the world to conduct the attack against adm Yamamoto and his staff. Not even the vaunted wooden wonder could have pulled that off. I

What is the best WW2 simulator out there today?

i love happy ends

Респект!!! +++

when planes ditched their drop tanks (by the hundreds) did they cause damage or injury..??

a 190 would eat a p38 for breakfast. p-38's did not do Europe if I recall correctly.

Our hero dies...not what i expected

As soon as he lost his wingman and taken out the other fighter he should have put his nose down and headed home on the deck, mission was over as soon as he jettisoned his bombs and rockets.

First 50! awesome video!