Test pilot Lt. Benjamin Kelsey flew the experimental XP-38 for the first time, an unusual twin-boom, twin-engine design conceived by young engineer Kelly Johnson. Though the prototype crashed weeks later during a record cross-country speed attempt, the design proved sound and evolved into the P-38 Lightning, which German pilots nicknamed the 'fork-tailed devil' for its distinctive silhouette and lethal firepower in the Pacific and European theaters.
Kelly Johnson, still in his twenties, had pitched the Army Air Corps an unconventional fighter: two engines mounted in slender booms flanking a central pod for the pilot and guns, an arrangement that looked bizarre next to conventional single-engine fighters of the day. The Army, hungry for a high-altitude interceptor capable of extraordinary speed and range, took the gamble.
On this cold California morning, Lieutenant Benjamin Kelsey eased the prototype off the runway at March Field, and the strange twin-boom shape proved it could fly, and fly fast. Weeks later, Kelsey pushed the same prototype on a transcontinental dash meant to break the coast-to-coast speed record, only to crash short of the finish line on a golf course near New York after ice fouled the carburetors; remarkably, the airframe's fundamental design was vindicated rather than doomed by the accident.
The production P-38 Lightning went on to serve brilliantly, particularly in the Pacific, where its range let it escort bombers over vast ocean distances, and where America's top-scoring aces, Richard Bong and Thomas McGuire, flew it to their victories. It was also the aircraft that, in 1943, intercepted and killed Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto over Bougainville, a mission made possible by the very range and speed first proven in this 1938 test flight.
Key people: Kelly Johnson, Lt. Benjamin Kelsey