My  Ride in a P-38

By Wayman Dunlap
Editor, Pacific Flyer

CLICK ON PHOTOS TO ENLARGE
 

Motorists meandering westbound along state Highway 76 adjacent to the Oceanside Airport (CA) in March 2007 were somewhat startled to see an honest-to-goodness, full-sized World War II Lockheed P-38 Lightning lining up next to them for landing.

Several took the next exit and roared into the parking lot, not believing their eyes, and who could blame them? There hadn't been a P-38 at Oceanside since the '70s.

Flown by Air Museum Planes of Fame President Steve Hinton, the camo-green, twin-boomed fighter with "23 Skiddoo" painted on its nose had already made a photo pass and you could hear airborne arguments on handheld radios.

"Was that a P-38?"  "Nah, couldn't be, not here."  "Sure looked like one."  "Must have been an RC model."

23 Skidoo doing a fly-by

Steve Hinton and the teeny, tiny passenger seat for Wayman

Hinton set them all straight as he casually touched down and took the next to last exit on the 3,000+ long by 75' wide runway.

Our Editor (well, me) had made a request to the Air Museum a few weeks earlier to fly in the P-38 whenever it got airborne next, for a story to go along with our upcoming airshow edition. They referred me to Hinton, 55, the first man to fly the ice-locked P-38 "Glacier Girl" after she was restored, and a well-known movie and aerobatic pilot in just about everything built between the Wright Brothers and Kelly Johnson.

I'd flown with Hinton several times before in vintage warbirds and consider him to be one of the best civilian pilots in the world.

"Sure, be glad to take you up," he said. "When do you want to go?"

We'd had nothing but early morning fog and drizzle for what seemed like weeks but I couldn't help saying, off-handedly, "too bad you couldn't get that thing into Oceanside, me being so busy and all."

"I could," Steve said. "When?"

"You'd fly the P-38 into Oceanside and pick me up?" I said in disbelief.

"Sure, it'll be fun."

We finally decided on a date of Monday, March 19 at 2 p.m. First, I immediately e-mailed the president of the 800+ member Oceanside Airport Association to have him let the members know that a P-38 was inbound (twice) but he must have been out of town as no one showed up. And second, I cracked two ribs on the day preceding the flight in a motorcycle misadventure.

But if Chuck Yeager could do it, I thought, I'm gonna.

I'll make that flight even if they have to bring me in an ambulance; what I didn't count on is that there is no back seat in a P-38.  Just a metal perch onto which they've affixed a cushion and a seat belt. Headroom is non-existent, so if you're over 4'5" you spend the whole flight staring at your shoes. As the crowd continue to grow around the plane, Steve explained its history to bystanders.

The plane never got into the war, even though it was built in 1944. It's a "J" model with later model engine cowls, but no hydraulic boosters on the ailerons, nor the dive recovery flaps on the bottom of the wing. Many test and military pilots got into fatal trouble in P-38s when they'd get into a dive (this was before anyone had ever heard of compressibility) and couldn't get out.

"This wouldn't be considered a very good airplane for high altitude use at all," Steve explained. However, he added, "it's big and smooth and comfortable to fly (if you're in the front seat). We fly this cross country all the time."

There's a ton of information on the internet (http://acepilots.com/planes/p38_lightning.html is one of the best) about the P-38 and even a fan club of former pilots and enthusiasts around, the P-38 National Association. The Air Force took note of the plane's history by naming the new F-35 Joint Strike Fighter the Lightning II, due to its namesake's vaunted successes in the Big War.

Steve said of the 9,200 or so built, there's only two now flying - this one, and Glacier Girl. A third was expected to be finished in time for the Air Museum's special event honoring Glacier Girl last month, and they'll all be flying for the famed Planes of Fame Airshow (May 17-18 in 2008). Three others are also undergoing restoration, Hinton added.

I asked him how it was to perform aerobatics in it and he smiled.  "It takes up a lot of sky," he said. Featuring two V-12 Allison engines with turbo superchargers, the P-38 has some 1,425 hp at its command but the Air Museum rarely uses all of it (in fact, one of the engines belongs to Tom Friedkin and he'd like it to stay healthy).

So our flight back to Chino was restricted to 45% power, 39" of manifold pressure and 2,000 rpm. Still, we had 500-550 hp (each) and the big Lightning was sucking up 100 gallons per hour to achieve its 240-250 mph flight. However, on takeoff, when both engines lit up, I was mashed back into the afterstructure of the cockpit as Steve climbed out at 2,000 fpm.

Fortunately for me, he restricted our flight to straight and level, more or less, as we skimmed past mountain ridges (which I could see out the side and out over the twin tail booms) and into the gray muck that Chinoites call air. Steve had on a really neat helmet that I thought was from WWII but is a hardhat made by an Aussie firm with built in earphones and headsets.  Mine was straight out of "The Hunters."

"It's a lot quieter in here than I thought it would be," I remarked over the intercom.

"Take off your headset," Steve answered. WHOOOMMMM!!!  What a racket! Okay, headsets are mandatory for those of you planning to buy a P-38, preferably one with "white noise."

One other downside of the P-38 (besides climbing up a retractable tiny ladder built into the center rear of the cockpit pod and trying to scramble up a slick wing with slippery shoes) is getting out in case of problems. Steve said he'd read the POM but after talking to a lot of P-38 drivers, the accepted procedure is full nose down trim, roll upside down, pop the canopy, let go the seat belt and "let it throw you out." (The book says climb out on the wing and dive off. Hah, fat chance.)

I noted that when we were getting ready to take off, he rolled up each side window just like you did on your dad's 1952 Chevy. There's no stick but a yoke and, on this model with no hydraulic assist, the ailerons are somewhat heavy.  You couldn't tell it by the way he flew the thing and the greaser landing he made at Chino.

"I've flown seven or eight different '38s," while accumulating his 10,000+ hours of warbird time, he said, "and putting the hydraulic boost on the ailerons made a big difference; those really fly like a fighter compared to this one."

You don't realize how big the plane is until you see it surrounded by spam cans, such as at Oceanside (the next plane to land behind him looked somewhat like a kite, in fact) and you can even walk around under it without bending over.

"It's a real big airplane so it's not as fast as a Mustang down low by any means," he said, adding, "it's not as fast as a Mustang at any altitude, actually. But it is great, it's a nice smooth airplane ... it just doesn't have that top speed."

But it could carry a load like no other fighter -- up to 4,000 lbs of bombs or gas with a range of more than 3,000 miles. As for single engine characteristics, Steve said if you lose an engine, it stops being a fighter and becomes a bomber.

"If we lose an engine taking off out of here," he smiled, "the ride is going to be, well, interesting."

But we didn't, and, in fact, I was somewhat surprised at how fast we got off the ground. After we landed at Chino (a whole 15 minutes later), we taxied over to the Air Museum, where they barely even noticed our arrival.

Of course, I counted numerous Mustangs (even a "B" model) sitting around, a P-40 taxiing out and the usual phalanx of old and new warplanes, so seeing the Lightning coming home was just another day at a place that makes me feel like I'm at Arlington.

Steve was kind enough to give me a tour of the brand new buildings at the rebuilt and refurbished Air Museum (no more dirt floors) and pointed out that the plane, now painted in the colors of the 475th Fighter Group - with their president's name, Perry Dahl on the cockpit - will soon have a new home all its own.  The 475th paid for the hangar and will fill it with memorabilia from their exploits, just another attraction at warbird heaven.

He also pointed to a number of names on one of the wheel covers who were responsible for "23 Skiddoo's" existence: Bob and Jo Pond who donated the money to restore it, John Goldblum at PolyFiber for paint, engineman Joe Yancey, Butch Drank of Drake Air who restored the radiators. Also listed is the USAF's 80th Fighter Squadron.

A few years ago it was painted in their colors in honor of one of their pilots, Ed Craig, one of the first aces in the Pacific, Hinton said. After autographing a Phil Makanna photo of the P-38 for the office, he introduced me to one of their volunteers, C.J. Schad, an Airbus A300 driver. Hinton said Schad would fly me back to Oceanside in Steve's Cessna 210.

At least the ride back, while a whole lot slower, was comfortable and I could actually sit up. True, being curled up in the back of a P-38 Lightning looking at your shoes for 15 minutes doesn't qualify you to dress up your logbook, but I'll always have it in my mental diary.

As for Steve, I couldn't resist asking him: "Don't you feel like some sort of god when you land something like this at some out-of-the-way airport?"

"It's not about me," he said. "It's always about the airplane."