Service incident of P-38 fighter

The first unit to use the P-38 was the 1st Flying Brigade of the US Army. After the Pearl Harbor incident, the 1st Flying Brigade joined the 14th Brigade stationed in San Diego to defend the west coast of the United States. The first P-38 used in actual combat is the F-4, which was converted from the P-38E by replacing the machine gun with a camera. On April 4th, 1942, they joined the 8th Photographic Reconnaissance Squadron in Australia. The Royal Australian Air Force used three F-4s in a short time after September 1942. On May 29th, 1942, 25 P-38s began their mission in Aleutian Islands, Alaska. The long voyage makes it very suitable for participating in the battle over this 12-mile (2-kilometer) long island chain. However, the Aleutian Islands are not suitable for testing the actual combat performance of new fighters. The number of P-38s crashed due to bad weather and other reasons is more than that shot down by enemy planes.

Some P-38 pilots flew between the gray sky and the gray sea for a long time, and then flew their planes directly into the sea. They didn't know it was the water until they crashed. On August 9, 1942, two P-38Es of the 343rd Fighter Brigade of the 11th Army met with two imperial japanese navy' 97 seaplanes and shot them down during a long-distance patrol mission with a one-way voyage of 1, miles (1,6 kilometers). They were the first Japanese fighters shot down by P-38s. After the Battle of Midway, American Army Airlines began to send fighter planes into Britain to participate in the Bolero Project. The P-38 of the 1st Flying Brigade flew to England via Iceland. On August 14th, a P-38F and a P-4 shot down a Fw 2 while performing a mission outside Iceland. This is the first German Air Force plane shot down by American Army Aviation. In the face of enemy attacks, the P-38 was lucky to escape many times.

a typical example is: in July 1942, the P-38 of the 71st Fighter Squadron landed in Gokhill (Lincolnshire, England), and the handover ceremony was scheduled for mid-August. On the day before the handover ceremony, Gokhill encountered the only air attack on it in World War II. A German bomber flew over the airport and dropped a bomb at the intersection of two newly-built runways. The bomb hit the target but did not explode, so the fighters here could still take off. Interestingly, the bomb could not be removed, so during World War II, allied fighters passed through it every time they took off from here. )

After 37 missions without exchanging fire with the enemy, the 1st, 14th and 82nd Flying Brigade joined the 12th Army in North Africa, which was established to complete the torch plan. On November 19th, 1942, P-38 escorted B-17 to complete a bombing mission in Tunisia. On April 5, 1943, 26 P-38F of the 82nd Flying Brigade destroyed 31 enemy planes, which helped seize the air superiority. P-38 was nicknamed "the devil with a forked tail" in the German army. P-38 is also very active over the Mediterranean.

The experience gained during the mission in Germany shows that the heavy bombers of the 8th Air Force need long-range fighters to escort them. The P-38H of the 55th Fighter Brigade was sent to the 8th Air Force in Britain in September, 1943, and the 2th, 364th and 479th Fighter Brigade soon joined.

although the P-38 got the enviable nickname "the devil with a forked tail" in the battlefield in north Africa, the P-38 was not so successful over Germany. It is simply a refrigerator when performing tasks at high altitude in the north, and its performance is not as good as Fw 19 and Bf 19. The reason why the P-38 didn't succeed in the high-altitude mission in Europe was that its engine would break down when the altitude was higher than 2, feet. The reason why the engine often fails is attributed to the problems of spark plugs and other parts, which can not use the fuel that is often mixed with rain in Europe. Many problems were solved on the P-38J, but in September, 1944, all the flight brigades of the 8th Air Force equipped with P-38 had all been replaced with P-51. The 8th Air Force continued to use the F-5, a P-38 reconnaissance aircraft, and used it more successfully. The P-38 shot down the most Japanese fighters among the US Army Aviation fighters.

on April 18th, 1943, American pilots shot down the plane of Isoroku Yamamoto, the commander of the Japanese navy, in a P-38. After the American intelligence department cracked a secret telegram, the intelligence personnel found that Yamamoto would visit the front line in bougainville island, so the US military sent 16 P-38s to destroy Yamamoto's landline. The whole plan was as follows: First, fly 7 kilometers (435 miles) at a low altitude of 3 meters to 15 meters above sea level to avoid being discovered. After finding the target, four planes attacked Yamamoto's landline and the other 12 covered it. This group of P-38s met Yamamoto's plane and the escort Zero Fighter and got into fire with them. Yamamoto's plane was hit and fell into the jungle.

during the battle of Bisma from March 2 to 4, 1943, the P-38 escorted the 5th Air Force and Australian bombers and attack planes at high altitude, which was a heavy blow to the Japanese. Two P-38 ace pilots of the 39th Fighter Squadron died on the second day of this naval battle. They were Bob Faurot and Hoyt Curley Eason (a veteran who shot down five enemy planes and taught hundreds of pilots, including richard bong Ge).

during world war ii, the flight path of P-38 was spread all over the war zone. In 1941, it made its first attack in England, but it did not encounter enemy planes. In November 1942, he began to run around North Africa with remarkable results. Since then, it can be seen from time to time in the strategic bombing of Britain and the United States. In July 1943, a very small number of P-38s joined the Soviet Air Force. By 1944, in the Asian-European battlefield, there were already 13 brigades of Luhang using P-38 fighters. After the 5th Air Force went to New Guinea to fight against Japan, by November 1943, the ace Major Richard Bong had shot down 21 Japanese planes, ranking first in the 5th Air Force. Major Richard Bong had shot down 4 Japanese fighters with P-38s before the end of the war. Prior to this, any commander had already ticked off the pilot's name when ordering F-4F and F-2A to take off for "Zero War". On the chain islands lacking supplies, it is the stage for its long-range and large firepower. In the spring of 1944, it even appeared on the battlefield in China. This fighter with two fuselage left terrible memories for its similar rivals, Zero Fighter and Fw 19, with its endurance and fierce firepower. On October 13th, 1944, an American Lockheed P-38 Lightning fighter suddenly landed in the wilderness near Milan, Italy. "Lightning" came so suddenly that German air defense observation posts and anti-aircraft guns didn't even have time to respond. It was not until the pilot opened the cockpit cover and hands in the air stepped out of the plane that the Germans reacted. They ushered in a defector.

Lieutenant Martin J Monti is considered to be the only American pilot who defected to Nazi Germany during World War II. Monti was born in an extremely devout Catholic family in the United States. Under such circumstances, it is not surprising that he became a devout Catholic. During the Great Depression of the United States, Monti, like many other young Catholics, listened to Father Colin's radio sermons in large quantities and was mixed with racism, Nazism and anti-* * thoughts. But this did not affect his joining the US military, receiving flight training and going to the front. After all, it was a shortcut to get bread in wartime.

In September p>1944, Monty was transferred to India as a second lieutenant of the 126th Supplementary Battalion, ready to be added to the European P-38 fighter unit to participate in the war. However, the U.S. military has achieved absolute air superiority on the western front of Europe, and the demand for additional pilots is not very great. Monti lived an idle life for a while before being transferred to Pommigliano, Italy, and became a pilot of the 82nd Fighter Wing. Like many young American pilots at that time, Monty longed to be a hero, to prove himself by performing on the battlefield, to win the favor of women, and to earn more bread money at the same time, but the change of the war situation did not give him such an opportunity. Monty once met Colonel Edwinson, the captain of the 82nd Fighter Wing, and asked to fight with the Germans in the first-line troops, but his request was rejected. Monti's thoughts were very confused at this time. He had imperceptibly accepted the values of national socialism since he was a child, but after joining the US military, he received a lot of anti-Nazi education, and at the same time, he was influenced by a lot of "informal" anti-Soviet and anti-* * propaganda from the government and the people. Therefore, Monti didn't know the significance of his existence as an American pilot until one day, an idea suddenly flashed into his mind: to go to Germany, join the German army, and go to the Soviet Union.

Sometimes, ideas and opportunities appear at the same time, and people can't help but have a chance to regret it. Just a few days after Monti's request to go to the front was rejected, a batch of newly-manufactured P-38 fighters from the 354th Maintenance Brigade arrived in Pommigliano, where they will be overhauled and then sent to the first-line troops to participate in the war. While chatting with the ground crew, Monty noticed that there was a red cross on the A1 maintenance badge of a P-38 F-5E reconnaissance Lightning with serial number 44-23725, which indicated that the plane had just completed maintenance, but it needed a test flight. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Monti, who has made up his mind to defect. After doing nothing in Pommigliano, he finally has the opportunity to fly to the sky alone, without worrying about any interference from other American planes around him. On October 13th, 1944, Monty applied to volunteer as the test pilot of this P-38 F-5E, and it was approved without any problem. After taking off, Monty immediately turned his course and flew north, hoping to find a German airport to land after flying over the front line, but he soon got lost without any actual combat experience, and there was no runway in sight. Monty was in a panic. Although it was a test flight, his P-38 still carried enough fuel to stay in the air for a while, but Monty was anxious to land because he didn't want to meet any plane in the air, whether it was American or German. Fortunately, not far ahead, a long strip of grass caught his eye, and his subconscious told him that this was the only chance. Monty immediately lowered his altitude and landed the plane safely on this grass. This is the scene that appeared before. German soldiers gathered around and looked at the brand-new P-38 and its pilot in hands in the air in surprise until someone came to his senses and escorted Monty to the office of Hanns·Scharff, the presiding officer of the German Air Force. Hans Schaefer is one of the best interrogators of the German Air Force, who is mainly responsible for interrogating the captured pilots of the 8th and 9th United States Flying Wing. He is a very keen man, but he is also suspicious, but most of the captured pilots of the US military who have been interrogated by him think that Schaefer is also a humane interrogator. When Monty told Schaefer that he wanted to join the German Air Force and go to the Eastern Front to fight against the Soviet Union, Schaefer was taken aback, which was completely different from the caliber of other American pilots he had interrogated. As a defector, Monty did not carry any valuable documents, nor did he show hatred or disgust for the United States in his speech. Shafer communicated Monti's case to his superiors and concluded that Martin J Monti was an American spy, not a traitor. But Schaefer never understood why the US military sent such a "spy" in this way. To be sure, Monty was put into a prison camp. However, there are many opinions about his performance in the prison camp. Some people say that he was held as an ordinary prisoner of war until the prison camp was liberated. Some people also say that Mundi was transferred to Berlin after a few days in the prison camp, where he became a Nazi propaganda tool and read the far-right manuscript written by Father Colin to American soldiers through the radio. What is even more bizarre is that Mundi joined the SS in Berlin and later wore an SS uniform in Italy.

Whether Mundi was favored by the Nazis or not, the P-38 he brought with him was a treasure to German technicians. Although the Germans had captured the P-38, it was damaged to some extent, while the P-38 F-5E brought by Mundi was a brand-new and good plane without any damage. The P-38 F-5E was nicknamed "Wanderer Circus". In May 1945, the P-38 F-5E of "Rosarius Circus" was discovered by the US military in Schoengau, Austria. At this time, its fuselage was covered with the symbols of the Nazi Air Force, and its nose wheel was seriously damaged. The plane could not move on the ground. The US military did not repair the plane, but threw it into the junk pile.

the story of Martin J. Mundi didn't end here. He was investigated by the US military court after the war. Ironically, the military court still failed to find out that Mundi's capture was actually due to his defection, so it only gave him a very slight punishment, and he was reinstated in the army with the rank of Private. In 1948, Mundi was discharged with the rank of Staff Sergeant. But after all, the paper can't hold fire. Hans Schaefer, who interrogated Mundi at that time, moved to the United States after the war. In the United States, Schaefer participated in a series of activities to cooperate with the US military investigation. During this period, Schaefer testified that the capture of Martin J Mundi was entirely his personal defection. Although Mundi himself did not provide any confidential documents of the US military to the German army or directly hand over the plane to the German side, his behavior had a clear political purpose. After Monty retired, the FBI immediately detained him on charges of treason, stealing valuable military materials and participating in Nazi propaganda. According to the laws of the United States at that time, it was enough to sentence him to death. However, under the almost crazy anti-* * wave in the United States after the war, Monty's defense lawyer won a reduced sentence for him on the grounds that his purpose of defection was not anti-American, but anti-* *. Finally, Martin J. Monty was sentenced to 28.

The whole case of Mundi's defection is the most direct proof that the United States itself was inconsistent with its Soviet allies before and after World War II, and it was also the bitter wine caused by the connivance of Nazism before the war. Mundi's dramatic light punishment after the war and the subsequent mccarthy era were all great satires. Richard Ira Dick Bong (Bong) Record: 4

Major R Bong, the No.1 trump card of World War II in the United States, spent the period from October 1943 to March 1944.