[ARC5] 2013 Chino Airshow - P-38

[Kenneth G. Gordon]

On 6 Jun 2013 at 15:08, Mark K3MSB wrote:

> Great pictures!  The last time I saw a Twin Tailed Devil in the air was
> Lefty Gardner's White Lighting many many moons ago!

Lefty's "White Lightning" was one of the few P-38s which was flying at the time that I saw it 
(about 1979 in Topeka, Kansas) which still had working turbo-superchargers.

It was totally silent on the ground. The ground crew told me they had to be very careful not to 
walk into a turning prop, since you couldn't hear the engines running.

It was warming up and I was, maybe, 15 feet from it. It WAS totally silent. I was amazed at its 
complete silence. 

No wonder the Japanese called it "Whistling Death". (It was called "Fork-tailed Devil" or 
something like "Gabelschwanz Teufel" by the Germans).

When Lefty made his passes over us, "White Lightning" sounded somewhat like a very, very 
quite vacuum cleaner: a quite whistle, a kind of shiss, and a very little bit of prop noise, 
obviously moving very fast.

I'll never forget it. The P-38 has been my favorite airplane since I was quite young.