German Pilots Named It the Fork-Tailed Devil — Then Pretended It Wasn't a Threat
German soldiers gave the P-38 a name their own commanders refused to speak — der Gabelschwanz-Teufel, the fork-tailed devil. Then the Luftwaffe's top general put it in writing: this aircraft is no threat at all. One of those two Germanys was about to be proven catastrophically wrong. This is the story of the Lockheed P-38 Lightning through German eyes. Luftwaffe ace Kurt Bühligen's flight shot down seven Lightnings in a single fight over Tunisia and called the aircraft "easy to burn" — and for a full year, the mockery was true. Adolf Galland rated it no better than Germany's own failed Bf 110. Yet in April 1943 the same machine tore apart the Afrika Korps' air lifeline over the Sicilian Strait during Operation Flax, helped force a quarter of a million Axis soldiers into captivity, and killed the Luftwaffe's greatest "Lightning killer," Franz Schiess of JG 53, in the sea off Naples. Through the frozen ordeal of the 55th Fighter Group over Bremen, the first Allied fighters ever to reach Berlin on March 3, 1944, Robin Olds' impossible dead-stick kill, and the interception of Admiral Yamamoto in the Pacific, this WW2 aircraft documentary follows a fighter plane that lived two lives in the enemy's mind — the one the generals mocked, and the one that won. Sources for every claim in this video are listed below! Which German verdict do you think was closer to the truth in early 1943 — Galland's dismissal, or the soldiers' nickname? Tell us below. #worldwar2 #ww2 #germanworldwar sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockhee... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operati... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Olds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/55th_Op... https://www.historynet.com/p-38-flunk... https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war... https://www.abmc.gov/news-events/news... https://airandspace.si.edu/collection... https://www.joebaugher.com/usaf_fight... https://acepilots.com/eto/olds.html https://www.americanfighteraces.org/r... https://airandspace.si.edu/stories/ed...
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