Another recent post from my LOCKHEED P-38 LIGHTNING colllection. Richard Ira Bong, America’s all-time leading fighter ace scored all of his victories in the Lightning.

Originally shared by Pete Panozzo

Richard Bong was America’s all-time leading fighter ace. All of his forty victories were performed in a P-38. In San Francisco Richard Bong looped-the-loop around the Golden Gate Bridge. He then buzzed Market Street in his Lightning and waved at the stenographers staring in astonishment out of office windows. Though General Kenney had given him a stiff talking to, he knew that Dick Bong had the makings of a first-rate fighter pilot. At the age of 24, Major Richard I. Bong lost his life in the fiery crash of a P-80 jet he was testing for the Air Force On August 6, 1945 (the same day the B-29 Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima.)

Photos 1 and 2 From: http://www.aviation-history.com/lockheed/p38.html