How many P-38 Aces? ...

[Mark Allen M]

according to the P-38 National Association website below. I count 165 total during WWII in all theaters.
http://p38assn.org/aces/aces.htm

My count of P-38's in the photo below is roughly 130 if you count some of the P-38's cut off around the edges of the photo. The point being? well no real point other than it's slightly interesting to imagine that every P-38 in the photo would have been an aces mount and would have accounted for at least 5 kills. Kinda interesting perhaps.


P-38's at Clark Field. Multiple rows of Lockheed P-38 Lighting aircraft lined up on a grass field; circa 1945-1946

[John Dupre]

Cool photo. At least two are F5 photo recon types.

[ALOHADAVE]

And all those P-38s were scrapped in the Philippines.
They dug a big hole, threw in some grenades, burned and buried them.
I know where the pile was, want to go digging?

Attachments

[Jesse C.]

I thought I read somewhere that they dug up some stuff already,but, it was so burned up and corroded that it was not worth the hassle.

[wendovertom]

Kind of makes you wonder why the Philippines AF (or the beginnings of what would be the PAF) didn't want at least some of those Lightnings.

Time gives us a different perspective on the value of those planes - thousands of extras and quickly becoming obsolete, a the time now one cared about recycling and museums were not hot on the trail for them either. Still it kills me to see them scrapped this way.

Tom P.

[lucky52]

Any idea what equipment, if any, was removed before scrapping?

[John Dupre]

Scrapping was going on all over. There was a field with hundreds if not a thousand B-24s in Indonesia. I knew a vet who was on Okinawa just after the war and saw them burn Mustangs; molten aluminum was running down the road from the site. Still there were some areas with smaller numbers that survived for many years until the Japanese came along in the 1950s. I read that there were many P-38s and other types scrapped by the Japanese on Guadalcanal. Even in the 60s scrapping was going on. Read somewhere on this site about a memory of a man who lived on a formerly Japanese occupied island. There was a Rufe or a Pete floatplane secured inside a hangar at a former seaplane base until an American contractor came along and scrapped it. Now that the Pacific island nations understand the value of these relics and the costs of recovery are going up scrappers teach the locals to dig a trench around the wreck; burn it to melt the aluminum and then bring the ingots to the scrapper.

[Dave Hadfield]

Also, the P-38 cost a lot. It was expensive to run, expensive to fix and burned a lot of gas.

The P-51 could do most of the same job for a lot less money.

Mind you, this one mapped the Andes -- Kenting Aerial Surveys.



My father flew their B-17s at the time, and remembers the airplane, and the crew that operated it. Very effective compared to the Fort -- only one pilot, one photographer/navigator, and only 2 engines.

Dave

[Richard W.]

It makes me dizzy trying to wrap my mind around the scale of the waste involved in that war.

Lives, money, time...

[jdvoss]

After a close look at the 130+ P-38's in the lead photo it appears that they are all "Factory Fresh" aircraft. None have sqdn markings, nose numbers or oil marks on the nacelles. All brand new from Burbank. California...

JDV
www.fuselagecodes.com