P-38 Lightning

Thorough but intelligible, the documentary begins with the Wright brothers and skims on up to the challenges facing the designers of the P-38 at the Lockheed plant in Burbank, California.

There are no talking heads, only an informative narration. Adequate time is given to the design and manufacture of the Lightning, as well as its maintenance in the field and the several variants produced.

It's a candid film. The Brits placed an order with Lockheed but were sent underpowered and underarmed versions, which they called "emasculated Lightnings." Until later in the war, the airplane suffered from compressibility which caused severe buffeting at high speeds. As a bomber escort, it was less maneuverable than the German fighters it faced. Its firepower and its ability to carry a decent bomb load made it a valuable ground attack airplane. But I think the constant references to the P-38's German nickname of "forked-tail devil" is a myth concocted by some newspaper correspondent. In his war memoirs, Adolf Galland wrote that the German pilots soon caught on to the weaknesses of the P-38 -- maneuverability, vertical climbs, and so forth, and that they had roughly the same flight characteristics of the Me-110.

Troops of all sides in the field were fond of giving nicknames to enemy weapons but they usually carried a comic touch, as if to lessen their the real threat they represented. German weapons acquired names like "screaming mimies", "burp guns," and "Anzio Annie." Japanese weapons had names like "Pistol Pete" and "Washing Machine Charlie." The Germans called our B-24s "furniture vans." That's neither here nor there, of course. This is an above-average series on the whole, at least the episodes that I've seen, and this one is emblematic.