Lockheed P-38 Lightning

The Lockheed P-38 Lightning is an American twin-engine, twin-boom fighter aircraft built by Lockheed, entering United States Army Air Forces service in 1941 and serving throughout the Second World War in both the European and Pacific theaters. Built with an unconventional twin-boom layout housing two engines and concentrating its armament, a combination of machine guns and a cannon, in the central nacelle rather than in the wings, the P-38's design gave it exceptional range for a single-seat fighter of its era, a quality that made it especially valuable for long-range escort and interception missions across the vast distances of the Pacific theater. The P-38 is particularly associated with the April 1943 mission that shot down the aircraft carrying Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, and it was flown by America's two highest-scoring fighter aces of the war, both of whom achieved most of their victories in the type.