Lockheed P-38 Italian Air Force 4th Stormo v1.0

Lockheed P-38 Italian Air Force 4th Stormo v1.0

This folder contains a repaint for the Lockheed P-38L Lightning by Flying Iron. It shows P-38L-5-LO MM4386 of the 4th Stormo of the Italian Air Force, 1949. After the war, Italy received 100 dismantled ex-USAAF P-38s, in an agreement dated April 1946. Seven of these airframes were not rebuilt but were reserved for use as spares. The remaining 93, after a one-month refurbishment by IMM (Aerfer), were first issued to the 3rd Stormo in Bari and Lecce, in Apulia. They were a mix of P-38L fighters and PR conversions, including F-5E, G and H models. The heavy fighters flew reconnaissance missions over the Balkans, as well as ground attack, naval cooperation and air superiority missions. Italian P-38s made their operational debut on 9 September 1948, when a single F-5 took photographs of objectives in the Balkans. Because of the big dimensions of this fighter, the old engines, and pilot errors, a very high number of P-38s were lost in accidents. At least thirty crashes of P-38s in Italian service claimed a number of victims. Despite this, many Italian pilots liked the fighter, due to its excellent visibility on the ground and its stability at take off. The P-38s were finally phased-out in Italy in 1956. Today, no Italian P-38s survive, nor even a single component from one, as these aircraft, because of the high value of their light alloys, were quickly recycled for their metal content. Repaint by Jan Kees Blom, based on the textures by Flying Iron.