COBI's Lockheed P-38H Lightning is a 1:32 model built from 650 blocks, 35.5 cm long with a 49 cm wingspan. The propellers turn, the landing gear folds, the ailerons move, and the cockpit opens for the pilot figure. A display stand with a commemorative plaque is included.
The man who designed it
Clarence "Kelly" Johnson was 27 when he laid out the P-38, and the twin-boom configuration was his answer to a specification nobody thought could be met: a fighter with two engines, a heavy central gun battery and enormous range.
He went on to found Lockheed's Advanced Development Projects division β the Skunk Works β and design the U-2 and the SR-71 Blackbird. The aeroplane in this box is the early work of the most consequential aircraft designer of the twentieth century.
The longest fighter mission of the war
On 18 April 1943, American codebreakers learned that Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, who had planned the attack on Pearl Harbor, would be flying to Bougainville on a precise schedule.
Only one aircraft in the Pacific had the range to reach him. Sixteen P-38s flew over 700 kilometres at wave height and in radio silence, navigating by compass and stopwatch, and arrived at the interception point within a minute of the calculated time. Yamamoto's aircraft was shot down.
The P-38's guns are all in the nose rather than the wings, which means no convergence point to judge β the fire goes where the aircraft is pointed, at any distance. Japanese pilots called it the two-planes-one-pilot; German pilots, der Gabelschwanzteufel, the fork-tailed devil.
Specifications
Pieces: 650 Β· Figures: 1 pilot Β· Scale: 1:32 Β· Display stand and plaque included
Model dimensions: 35.5 Γ 49 Γ 8.5 cm (14.0 Γ 19.3 Γ 3.3 in)
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