"USN P-38?" Topic

Came across this while looking up P-38s. Does anyone have any more info?

The quote from the page is,
"Found this picture in the Japanese magazine "Famous Aircraft of the World – February issue 1979" personally i never seen it before.
US navy lightnings picture probably taken in the Aleutians,but could be Greenland or Iceland also?
Unit uknown but there is an "Duck" insignia on one of the aircrafts tailbooms."
link

I was wondering if it might just be a faded paint job. Robert

Faded paint job. Although Lockheed offered the plane to the USN, it wasn't adopted due to size (too big for carrier ops) and engine (the USN preferred air-cooled radials).

The only exception were F-5Bs (recon version of the P-38) acquired from the USAAF in North Africa. They were designated FO-1 and were assigned the BuNos 01209/01212. They were operated exclusively as land-based aircraft and never from carriers.

A USN aircraft should also have a star on the upper right wing.

At the upper left edge of the photo there is another aircraft, looks to be a single engine tail dragger, possibly a P-40, that also looks kind of blue-ish. I'm inclined to write this photo off as faded paint jobs/weird light conditions/funky colorization.

However, I have read that USAAF recon aircraft, including F-5s, were sometimes painted a mid- to light-blue overall.

They wouldn't be F-5s due to the early war insignia.Though the first F-5 flew in 1942.None that I know of was used in the Aleutians,Greenland or Iceland. Also I was thinking along the lines of the faded paint and had seen the P-40 in the background. Robert

A simple google search of Naval P38 turned up this:

link

Looks like they were Army P38-E-LOs of the USAAF 54th squadron at Adak, Alaska. Note the P40s with the yellow nose cones.

"A simple google search"

A simple look at the link in the original post is where the information came from. My bad that I hadn't read it all LOL. Robert

While you already have your answer I would add that having a duck as an emblem in no way necessarily denotes a Navy Aircraft. After all, one of Doolittle's raiders was "The Ruptured Duck" and Donald Duck was a popular piece of nose art.

The Biue color most likely is due to poor color balance during the developing. Developing color photos at thet time was still in it's infancy and was often not well balanced.