| Caption | P-38J-15-LO Lightning aircraft 'Colorado Belle', 1943-1945, photo 2 of 2; note 'droop snoot' glass nose for bombardier ww2dbase | ||||
| Source | ww2dbaseUnited States Government | ||||
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| Photos in Series | See all photos in this series | ||||
| Added By | C. Peter Chen | ||||
| Added Date | 4 May 2010 | ||||
| Licensing | Public Domain. According to the United States copyright law (United States Code, Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 105), in part, "[c]opyright protection under this title is not available for any work of the United States Government". |
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19 Apr 2010 09:12:25 PM
This is a P-38 in the Droop Snoot configuration. The Droop Snoot was a concept developed outside of Lockheed to use the high speed of the P-38 to reduce the risk for crews in level bombing missions. Later versions of the P-38 (J and L) had the same bomb load of a B-17 with one tenth of the crew. The idea was to adapt a P-38 with a housing in the nose for a qualified bombardier and the famous Norden bombsight to guide other aircraft to the target. The Droop Snoot flew lead and when it dropped its bomb load, the rest of the flight dropped too. Although Lockheed modified a number of P-38L to the Droop Snoot at the factory, dozens of conversion kits were also produced to enable field modifications on L and J models.