Long-Range Fighter

Pride of the Army Air Forces today is Lockheed's twin-tailed P-38 Lightning, which pilots heartily damned three years ago as clumsy and tricky. With plenty of high-altitude performance, the Lightning is now not only untricky, but a speedy, versatile performer, good for dive-bombing and troop-strafing as well as for meet ing the best of enemy fighters.

This week the Air Forces revealed that the P-38 also has another priceless quality. It is also capable of long-range cruising, an attribute never found in European fighters.

Best measure of its range is that the P-38 for months has been flown to combat areas, across the Pacific and both North and South Atlantic. Thus a new method of delivery avoids submarines, delays in ship transit, the need for unloading facilities and assembly stations at war-theater delivery points.

To get such flexibility of fighter supply, engineers devised a big (165-gallon) plastic tank, attached one to each wing of the Lightning. Weighing 1,000 Ib. when full (90 empty), the tanks are jettisoned when used. Streamlined, they take only 4% off the P-38's top speed, a lower percentage at cruising speeds.

Thus an added load solved a supply problem. But it made another. The lone pilot of a P-38 has no room, no instruments and no time for over-water navigation. For that problem, the Army's solution was simple. To all ocean flights of Lockheeds a Flying Fortress is assigned to shepherd its flock to the other side.

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