Why Japan's Top Ace Couldn't Chase Down the P-38 Lightning

On April 18, 1943, American codebreakers used a decoded flight schedule to send eighteen P-38 Lightnings on a 600-mile mission over open ocean — to kill Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the architect of Pearl Harbor. This is the story of Operation Vengeance: how Major John Mitchell navigated by dead reckoning alone to hit an exact intercept point, how the P-38 Lightning's unmatched range and diving speed made the mission possible, and why Japanese Zero pilots who faced it nicknamed it "the fork-tailed devil" — a fighter that could dive away from any pursuit and vanish. Featuring the true accounts of the escort pilots who survived the ambush, the secrecy that hid America's codebreaking success for years, and the rivalry between Richard Bong and Thomas McGuire, the two highest-scoring American aces of WW2, both flying the same aircraft that killed Yamamoto. #WW2 #P38Lightning #Yamamoto #PacificWar #OperationVengeance #WWIIHistory #FighterPilot #PearlHarbor