Warbird Information Exchange

Elmendorf AFB Restores P38 Lightning Airplane Had Been Stripped And Abandoned In The Aleutian Islands


Flying through a January sky in 1945, U.S. Army Air Forces 2nd Lt. Robert
Nesmith was piloting a P-38G Lightning - one of the Air Force's best
aircraft during World War II. The plane, equipped with two engines and
relatively long wings, was a beautiful sight, and Nesmith worked hard to be
in a position to fly it across the Pacific.



The U.S. Army Air Forces accepted the P-38G from the manufacturer, paying
$98,441.00 for it. The plane arrived at Elmendorf Field, Alaska, and was
assigned to the 54th Fighter Squadron. "It was one of the most significant
aircraft in World War II," said Joe Orr, the 673rd Air Base Wing senior
historian. "The Germans hated it; the Luftwaffe called it the 'fork-tailed
devil,' and the Japanese called it 'two planes, one pilot.' It was small
enough to be very agile. It had two engines, so it had the power to go
really fast, and once they put turbochargers on the engines, they could go
higher and faster than most enemy aircraft."

That wasn't the only advantage possessed by the P-38. "They had long range
as well because the wingspan was big enough to put drop tanks with more fuel
on there and get some distance," Orr explained. "They were used all over the
Pacific, from island to island, because of their reach. That made the P-38
desirable for Air Force operations, and especially here in the Aleutians
where a 1,200 mile mission was the norm.

After the Japanese left Attu Island and U.S. forces recovered the islands,
the land was used to fly missions into northern Japan. Nesmith was returning
from a training mission, crossing over Attu Island, when something went
wrong. The aircraft's left propeller fluctuated while flying low in Temnac
Valley. "I was getting -- not serious -- but a little fluctuation," Nesmith
said. "I had really pushed things down and it was real low." Both propellers
contacted the ground. The plane bounced back up approximately 100 feet
before Nesmith managed a successful wheels-up landing on the snow-covered
valley.


Unharmed, the pilot surveyed the damage. It was well beyond repair. "It was
not in an accessible area," Orr said. "In order to get to it, you had to
hike to it. They didn't have heavy-lift helicopters that could pick it up
and bring it back. Maintenance crews just stripped it of what wasn't damaged
and left the rest there," he said. "They essentially just abandoned it in
place; it sat there for more than 50 years."

The plane crashed in the Aleutian Islands which are property of the U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Services, so the Air Force had to work with the agency to
recover the plane.


Orr said the process of getting permission to have the last P-38G Lightning
on Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson was almost as difficult as restoring the
one-of-a-kind aircraft's outside appearance. Capt. Steve Morrisette, a 54th
Fighter Squadron pilot in 1998, contacted Don Delk and Ed Lamm, 3rd Wing
civilian employees with a combined experience of 70 years, to head the team
that actually went to the island and brought the plane back. Lamm --
considered the expert on structural repair -- was responsible for restoring
all the base static displays. Delk had the expertise of management and
recovery of aircraft, and resources as the maintenance squadron officer. He
had previously been part of recovery projects for crashed F-15 Eagles and
the E-3 Sentry that crashed on Elmendorf in September 1995.



"(The P-38) was in sad shape," Delk said. "Even though it had been beaten up
pretty severely by the salvage crew and chopped up with crash axes to remove
components and such, it had a good bit of corrosion, but not as much
corrosion as we would expect being this close to the ocean. So for the
number of years it laid out there, we thought it was in pretty fair shape."

They worked in "The P-38 Shop" in Hangar Four in 1998. McCloud died that
year, leaving many concerned that the project would die with him. Brig. Gen.
Scott Gration, the 3rd Wing commander at the time, picked up the direction
and supported the work. "I estimate between the trip to Attu and the whole
works, the recovery and restoration, we probably spent on the order of a
couple hundred thousand dollars," the restoration expert explained. "That is
cheap, dirt cheap for this type of restoration; downtown probably would have
taken me at least $500,000 and two or three years."

In March of 2000, the 3rd Wing awarded a $223,256.70 contract to build the
McCloud Memorial site where the P-38 was to be mounted. In July, the plane
was put in its current and final resting place. "A P-38 was the first
airplane in Alaska to score an aerial victory over a Japanese plane in World
War II," Orr said proudly.

After the war, thousands of aircraft were melted down and recycled. Because
it had been left on the island, the plane that Nesmith flew avoided that
fate. The world's last example of a P-38G Lightning, though incapable of
ever flying again, rests by the 3rd Wing headquarters building as a reminder
of the power it and other P-38Gs were able to wield during World War II.

Gary,

A Corpsman is a Navy medical specialist assigned to the Marines. It is an actual title with the Marines. My Grandfather was a Corpsman with the Marines from 1926 to 1945. His Navy rate was Chief Pharmacist Mate. The word may be misused at times but it is correct and can be found in just about any dictionary. I forgot about them guys, but I was referring to a certain commander at the highest level in America, that continually calls members of the Marine Corps as blah blah Marine Corpseman, not to be confused with the Corpsman like your Grandfather. It must have really taken a toll on him, with a lot of guys wounded beyond his capability and knowing they were dying. I would feel a sense of helplessness.

I think you could probably use "aircraft's" in the possessive form; i.e. "The aircraft's log book". this is, if I recall correctly, possessive, and not what I am thinking about here; it like we have 200 Lexusessesssesss (aircrafts) on the lot, instead of we have 200 Lexus (aircraft) on the lot, but I know what you are thinking of.

As to the article, did you notice that the spent just as much to restore it as they did to pour a slab of concrete and run some wiring? My Brother in Law is a Contractor. I just asked him what he could build for almost a quarter of a million dollars. He said about 5 to 10 houses; including the concrete slabs they sit on and the driveways. So I'm not sure why they did not enclose it.

The Army would have brought in the Engineers who would have charged it off as a training exercise.