Especially this plane, with a nose full of large caliber justice....

I feel like that sentiment could be said to our modern jets if enough time passes, and the creation of vehicles that can regularly fly in space or in an atmosphere. But yes WW2 props and even super props are Beautiful.

Absolutely. I always run outside and look up when I hear that distinct sound

Me too!

Absolutely 💯 %

Over 10,000 built, 26 still exist, only 10 airworthy.

@@dougthompson1598 no freaking way.... its really that little? thats so hard to believe

@@Mr.Thermistor7228 even harder to fathom when you realize it was the only front-line fighter aircraft to serve throughout the entirety of WW2, introduced to the USAAF in 1941 and retired in 1949. Honduras used them until 1965.

@@dougthompson1598 I keep reading that about the P38 but looking at dates it appears that the P47 was serving through the entire war, so was the P40 come to think of it. And the Wildcat for the Navy, it served through the entire war, anyone who would try to omit it based simply on the General Motors version having a different nomenclature is wrong, that doesn't mean anything it's still a Wildcat.

@@dukecraig2402 The P-47 entered service in Nov '42, but I think you're correct about the -40. I suppose it would be that the -38 was the only fighter in continuous production, not service. My mistake.

Do you know what kind of engine's he had in it? With a 9 foot wingspan they had to be something interesting.

He was Thomas McGuire's commanding officer.

It is so true. Every time a warbird takes off I always think the same.

Yeah isn't that a conundrum? Egotistically, we all want to see them fly, but they're so precious and so rare and so historic. We just want to preserve them thank God for these endeavors and the people that spend the money and the time to keep them going.

Yea I agree so why no Fire extinguisher to be seen on start up?

@@martinmoffitt4702 that's a great observation.

@@thereissomecoolstuff Former USAF Crew Chief Be well and Keep em' Flying!

There is a P-38 on display on a pedestal in a traffic circle on McGuire AFB. It wears the markings of Pudgy.

Unfortunately the one at McGuire has been in the elements for many years now.

they can even open cans.

BF-109's 🙂

@@joeblow5037 FIRST morning lol! Vielen Dank!?

@@phapnui And fire 9mm rounds.

@@georgesakellaropoulos8162 It had four 50 caliber guns & one 20 mm cannon. Not any wimpy 9mms. You are thinking of the Walther p38 pistol.

Yeah Man! I was there too and saw it fly in and beat up the base before the refurb. It flew in all Camo color. Rumor was trade for $$$ and an old C130….??? Who knows???

My son was there and they had it in storage and put it back up not too long ago.

McGuires father treated his widow like shit. The bastard!

@@matthewbratton3825 Where's it at now? In storage again?

I got a buddy of mine that help restore that P-38L.

It made so much sense to have that view in battle with cannon right there... so wonder pilots loved these machines....

@@wokewokerman5280 The photo reconnaissance version was unarmed, the camera, which was large, went up in the nose where the guns normally went and there wasn't room for both. They also had some kind of strange set up for one of the variant's where a man would ride laying down in a pod with a plexiglass nose on it that mounted where a drop tank would, I don't know how I'd feel about riding around in one of them knowing that if the pilot screwed up and flipped the wrong switch you'd know how a drop tank felt on the way down, that'd be a pretty unnerving feeling flying in one of those things.

@@dukecraig2402 I have never heard of a manned drop tank-style pod. I do know they made a droop-snoot version, the P-38J, where a man and bombsight were in the plexiglass nose section in place of the weapons. These were pathfinders and when the bombardier spotted the target, incendiary bombs would be dropped so the fires would mark the target for the bombers that followed.

@@pauld6967 P38 Pathfinder's weren't used in the Pathfinder role for heavy bombers, they had their own Pathfinder's. P38 Pathfinder's were used for other P38's that were set up for bombing missions, there was a nickname for P38 bombing missions but I can't remember what it is, only 1 P38 would have the ability to aim the bombs, that would be the Pathfinder, they would use either a Norden bombsight for when optical sighting was possible or a version of the H2X radar bomb aiming system when it wasn't possible to optically aim the bombs due to cloud overcast or other factors. The heavy bombers either had a lead bomber (which unlike with the P38's was not called the Pathfinder) using the Norden bombsight or their version of what they called a Pathfinder that used the H2X radar system, once they got to the IP if it was determined that cloud overcast or too much smoke from the RAF bombing the same target the night before made optical sighting of the target impossible then their radar equipped Pathfinder would take over from the lead bomber and move into the lead position and all the other bombers would bomb on it's cue, just as they would if the lead bomber was optically bombing. Using P38's as Pathfinder's for B17's or B24's was impractical for several reasons, the biggest being the difference in aircraft, their speeds and turning radiuses were completely different, the crews didn't train with each other meaning that a P38 pilot couldn't just jump up in front of a formation of heavy bombers and lead them, without having done a lot of training with them they wouldn't know how fast to fly, how fast the heavy bombers could fly in a turn or how big the turn radius needed to be. P38 Pathfinder's flew lead for P38's in formation that were all configured for a bombing mission, once again I can't remember the name for when they did that, but it was the unarmed photo reconnaissance P38's with their glass noses that were used in the Pathfinder role for them, the rest were regular armed P38's carrying two 2,000 lb bombs, all of them would release on the Pathfinder's cue which also carried bombs. B17 Pathfinder's were the radar equipped bombers that could take over from the lead bomber if it couldn't optically sight the target, otherwise it was just another bomber that dropped it's bombs by cuing off the lead bomber. Another difference is it was the RAF's Pathfinder's that lit up targets with flares, not US Pathfinder's be they the P38 or B17/B24 Pathfinder's, the British were bombing at night and needed to light up the target for the formation to see where to drop their bombs because they couldn't cue off a lead in the dark, their Pathfinder's did an even different job from US Pathfinder's that irregardless of whether they were P38 or B17/B24 Pathfinder's dropped actual bombs, dropping flares in daylight bombing is pointless sincerely everyone cue's off of the lead, and wouldn't see flares 20,000 ft below them on the ground in the daylight.

@@dukecraig2402 I respectfully disagree. I believe P-38Js were used with light bombers like the A-20 Havocs. I do entirely agree that they weren't used with the big boys, the Liberators and the Flying Fortresses.

I just bought one of those old Guillows balsa kits to build and hang in my grandson's bedroom ❤️

C P what was your dad's name. Me and my wife were good friends with Col. MacDonald. He was Tommy Mcquire's commanding officer. Col. MacDonald was the commander of the 475th. I am sure that your dad knew him. Meet the surviving members of the 475th at Col. Mac's funeral. Wonderful group of people who are definitely American heroes. I am a retired jet jockey .

I worked at a metal fab shop some years ago and they had a 700 ton hydraulic press there with a tag on it that said "property of the United States Navy" the story was, it used to be on an aircraft carrier during the second world War and was used to make replacement parts for the aircraft right on the ship. I don't know if there was any truth to it or not... but that was the story.

@@joetuktyyuktuk8635My dad told me one time that when he was in Korea. Watching the F-86s leave for a mission. One of the other squadrons aircraft took off with one of their squadrons tail sections. I’m sure they were just borrowing it. ( until the paint shop showed up!)

@@CSltz 🤣 "Borrowing"

There was a lot of things that they could have improved on the P38 that they'd learned about during it's service but a lot of them they didn't feel were worth the retooling and lost production time over since it was already performing well and it's pilots just learned how to fly it around those issues, I could just imagine what the last variant's would have been like had they done them. Greg's Airplane's and Automobiles channel did a good video on the subject of it's shortcomings and how some of them they just didn't address because of how successful it had already become despite them, it's titled something like "P38 Problems? Yes, Some Solutions? Maybe", I'm sure paraphrasing on that a little, it's an excellent video.

Agreed. In some respects it was the best airplane because it was there for the entire War. If we didn't have it, then we didn't have a 400mph plane to fight the Germans in 1941. In some respects it was the worst because it was the most expensive. That really mattered. You could get pretty much two P-51 Mustangs for the price of one P-38. Historians don't talk much about that. Where this warbird really excelled was in the Pacific flying in and out of the islands on long journeys. Plenty of drop tanks and two engines to get you home.

i was curious about that

Turbo supercharged and quiet compared to other piston planes from that era.

Can you imagine a modern P-38 with turboprops?

@@f-111fmissionsimulator4 Yea, no....pass 😜

What you mean the P 51 was in your face rowdy? I guess it did have 12 short exhaust stack straight pipes, but I'd think the big barking radials to be more so that way.

@@429thunderjet2 I just mean it's way louder than the P38..and yes you can lump any of the radials in there for sure.

I don’t think you were given a choice

Correct, u didn’t get a choice. I was just saying IF I had a choice.

Fun! I too like to imagine these warbird scenarios. And if you got the P-38 hopefully you got the J or L model with all the bugs worked out ( compressibility issue worked out, dive brakes and aileron boost). And more importantly, you flew in the Pacific not in the European theater. She was great but she didn't do good at altitude in Europe

They were beasts, that's for sure.

@@dukecraig2402 can't imagine what it was like to fly one in combat. The pilots had nerves of steel and were definitely heroes!

@@jeffreywolff4961 Oh yea, all those guages and pressures and speeds and everything else you have to keep track of in the middle of someone trying to kill you, not for the faint of heart. Although it was developed too late in the war to see service the A1 Skyraider for all intents and purposes is basically a WW2 airplane, I was watching a documentary about a mission that 2 Navy Skyraider pilots flew in Vietnam, one of them was talking about the aircraft and everything involved with flying it, at one point he mentioned that a full ¼th of their time of being trained on the Skyraider was just learning how to run the engine, think about that, then think about the fact that with a P38 you've got 2 of them to keep track of when it comes to boost levels, carburetor air temperature, and all the other things along with turbo RPM's, those guy's had their hands full just flying the thing much less dealing with an enemy in a 3 dimensional environment, no wonder it took so long to train the pilots.

Knowing all they were responsible for to keep the planes in the air is truly remarkable. I didn't realize the Skyraider entered the War so late. That is an incredible aircraft as well. The pilots had to be flight engineers as well as attacking and avoiding enemy fire. Truly incredible feats of coordination and situational awareness.

@@jeffreywolff4961 Yea the A1 wasn't quite in production yet when the war ended, I believe it was close, like had the war lasted a few more months they'd have seen action but they just missed the opportunity, I'm not sure if there was a strictly fighter version planned and since jets took over that role even if there was they weren't produced, all the variants produced were intended for ground attack basically, as far as I know no version ever had a gunsight for aerial combat only for bombing, but a stripped down version with a gunsight for aerial combat would have tore up just about any fighter of the war that anyone had, that plane had the Wright R3350 engine on it which is a massive engine for a single engine fighter, it would have done well against other prop driven fighter's of the war.

The engines are not radials.

I totally had the same exact thought! I thought for sure they would smoke more at start up. But like the other respondent said, they're "not radials".

@@TacitDragon And not an inverted V like ME-109 and some other German aircraft had.

Sounds like an old hot rod, beautiful

@@pmp2559 That's where Allison got it's start, building racing motors...

Good old sunken Lunken! Flew in there a few times!

@@UncaDave "Sunken", LOL, I love it!! When the Ohio River is high it does flood that area bad! They don't have airshows as much as they did in the past, I miss them. But they still have the War Birds at least once a year. I first saw stealth aircrafts at Sunken.

It is shocking to learn that after WW2 ended 100 new ones in the Philippines were destroyed.