P-38 in the Pacific

Perhaps Colonel Ben Kelsey, a P-38 test pilot, summed up the war bird’s legacy best of all. “(That) comfortable old cluck,” he said, “would fly like hell, fight like a wasp upstairs, and land like a butterfly.”

The P-38 was the most successful USAAF fighter in the Pacific War. It served with four separate air forces, spread out from Australia to Alaska. The most successful American Ace of the Second World War, Major Richard Bong, scored all 40 of his victories flying the P-38 Lightning over the Pacific.

P-38

The 11th Air Force was allocated the task of defending the Aleutian Islands, in the far north of the Pacific. There the extra reliability provided by the twin engines of the P-38 was essential, with missions being flown over long distances and in poor weather. The first P-38 victories of the war fell to pilots of the…

This is the first B-17E which was delivered to Wright Field on 03OCT41. It is wearing the Olive Drab over Neutral Gray camouflage scheme and the prescribed set of USAAC markings for the time. Her serial number, 41-2393 has not yet been applied to the vertical tail. The first 112 aircraft carried the Sperry remote turret in the belly position, which is just visible below the fuselage insignia in this photograph. This aircraft did not see combat, it was lost in Newfoundland on 09JAN42.

This is B-17E 41-2397, seen just prior to the Battle of Midway in this screen grab from John Ford’s film. This Fortress is one of only nineteen B-17Es repainted in the Hawaiian Air Depot camouflage scheme. She survived combat and was written off at the end of October 1944.

Here is 41-2405 seen warming up her engines in the pre-dawn twilight on 25JUN42. This Fortress was…

Battleground Pacific: A Marine Rifleman’s Combat Odyssey in K/3/5

By Sterling Mace and Nick Allen

Hardcover in dustjacket, 330 pages, illustrated

Published by St. Martin’s Press, May 2012

Language: English

ISBN-13: 978-1-250-00505-2

Dimensions: 5.7 x 1.3 x 8.4 inches

Sterling Mace grew up in Queens during the Great Depression. After the attack on Pearl Harbor he failed the U.S. Navy eye exam but was able to bluff his way through the second time and was accepted into the Marines. He was assigned to the 1^st Marine Division, 5^th Regiment, 3^rd Battalion, Company K. When he joined the 5^th Marines they were rebuilding on the island of Pavuvu, after having fought at Guadalcanal and Cape Gloucester. His first combat operation was the assault on Peleliu.

Mace was a BAR man on Peleliu, an island which had no natural source of fresh water but an abundance of heat…