Goodbye to White Lightnin'

BRECKENRIDGE — For more than three years, the P-38L Lightning has been sitting in a nondescript hangar, slowly being brought back to life bolt by bolt.

Just one of six still flying, the World War II-era fighter built by Lockheed will trade its humble West Texas airfield sometime next week for the sleek, all-glass Hangar 7 in Salzburg, Austria.

Once there, it will be the centerpiece of the Flying Bulls team funded by billionaire Dietrich Mateschitz, co-founder of the popular Red Bull energy drink, to promote the beverage.

Mateschitz, 64, who Forbes magazine says is worth $4 billion and ranks as the world’s 260th richest man, has assembled a fleet of 34 planes and helicopters, including a Douglas DC-6B airliner and a B25J Mitchell bomber. Hangar 7 also includes several bars and a high-end restaurant, where a new celebrity chef takes up residence every month.

"This plane will be the featured attraction along with the B-25," said Siegfried "Sigi" Angerer, the chief pilot for the Flying Bulls. "It will be the only P-38 in Europe. It’s going to get a lot of attention when we get it over there."

The Flying Bulls team started 20 years ago after Angerer took Mateschitz on a sightseeing flight. Angerer later was asked to paint a red bull on his plane and he agreed. In time, Mateschitz would return, seeking flying lessons and eventually help acquiring planes.

To get the plane to Austria will require a 7,500-mile journey across the North Atlantic to Greenland, Iceland, the Isle of Lewis in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides, Germany and finally to Austria. The four-day journey will require 25 hours and 5 minutes of flight time.

"I can’t have any head wind," said Angerer, who has made two-dozen treks across the North Atlantic. "I only have 4 1/2 hours of fuel and the leg [from Iqaluit, formerly Forbisher Bay, Canada] to Greenland takes 3 1/2 hours. You can’t mess around out there."

Nelson Ezell, owner of Ezell Aviation, the Breckenridge company that rebuilds warbirds, described restoring the P-38 as a monumental task but refused to detail the cost other than to say it was a "multimillion-dollar" project.

"It’s one of the most unique challenges we’ve ever done," said Ezell, who formed his company in 1986 and has done dozens of historical-aircraft restorations. "This plane has generated more attention than any other we’ve ever worked on.

"We put an entire new skin on it. We had to build a number of parts here by studying old manuals and borrowing parts from a P-38 at the War Eagles Museum in El Paso. It was a very complex job."

The plane has created a buzz among aviation enthusiasts across the country who have followed its progress on the Internet and stop by the Stephens County Airport for a look.

Among them was Breckenridge resident G.L. DuBose, a 67-year-old retired schoolteacher.

"Modern technology left it behind but never surpassed it," DuBose said as the plane taxied down the runway. "That’s a beautiful piece of technology right there."

So much so, that Lockheed Martin has given the F-35 joint strike fighter the added moniker of Lightning II after the fork-tailed devil, which saw action in the European and Pacific theaters during World War II. The original Lightning was versatile enough to be used as a fighter, bomber and reconnaissance plane.

Perhaps the best known P-38 is Glacier Girl, which was buried under a sheet of ice in Greenland. Along with five other P-38s and two B-17s, it was forced to make an emergency landing in 1942. Glacier Girl was restored to flying condition and now makes appearances across the U.S.

DuBose and other onlookers are disappointed to see the Flying Bull P-38 leave the United States.

Before an engine fire forced a 2001 crash landing in a cotton field near Greenwood, Miss., the plane was known as White Lightnin’ and was a staple at air shows and air races all over the United States.

But any misgivings should be offset by seeing it fly again, said Larry Gregory, president of the Lone Star Flight Museum in Galveston.

"Being a proud American, you can be selfish and want to keep these in the United States," Gregory said. "But the folks at Red Bull keep these planes flying and professionally maintained. One of my pilots has even flown it and says it’s amazing."

Angerer hopes it will be the last one added to the Flying Bulls collection, and he has advice for anyone trying to duplicate the effort.

"I get asked if a millionaire could do this," Angerer said. "I tell them not even close. It takes a lot of money — a lot of money — to do this."

The restored P-38L Lightning is towed out of the hangar in Breckenridge, about 100 miles west of Fort Worth.

S-T/RODGER MALLISON

THE ROUTE TO AUSTRIA
Full route	First leg
Second leg	Third leg
Final leg	The P-38 Lightning's 7,500-mile flight from Texas to Austria was expected to take four days--25 hours and 5 minutes in the air. The route was from Texas to Canada to Greenland to Iceland to Scotland, before hitting Germany and finally its new home in Salzburg, Austria.

WWII fighter brought back to life for another flight overseas