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The Lockheed Corporation designed the P-38 in response to a February 1937 specification from the United States Army Air Corps (USAAC). Circular Proposal X-608 was a set of aircraft performance goals authored by First Lieutenants Benjamin S. Kelsey and Gordon P. Saville for a twin-engined, high-altitude "interceptor" having "the tactical mission of interception and attack of hostile aircraft at ...
The American F-4, a factory modification of the Lockheed P-38 Lightning, replaced the nose-mounted four machine guns and cannon with four high-quality K-17 cameras. Approximately 120 F-4 and F-4As were hurriedly made available by March 1942, reaching the 8th Photographic Squadron in Australia by April (the first P-38s to see action).
Thanks in large part to the advocacy of the Director of Photographic Intelligence, the also very controversial Colonel Minton Kaye, a run of 100 Lockheed P-38 Lightnings were set aside for modification to F-4 standard, incorporating the trigonometric mount that both Kaye and Cotton had pioneered prior to the war. Despite the promising ...
This was followed by the "B" camera with a 36-inch-focal-length (910 mm) lens with F/10 and image motion compensation, resolving 100 lines per mm, and the ground resolution can be inferred by calculation to be 9.1 inches (23 cm). It was a panoramic camera which took pictures of an extremely large area of the earth's surface.
The first P-38 of the Compañía de Aviación Air army arrived in Santiago on 30 March 1947. It was its first modern aircraft. The air force of this small Latin American republic employed 11 Lightnings, mostly not armed. Dominican Republic was one of the last P-38's users until late 1950, when the remaining Lightnings were cut up and dumped. [3]
The squadron used Lockheed P-38 Lightning aircraft photo-reconnaissance variant F-5 throughout the war. The F-5 and F-5A were used from the summer of 1943 until the summer of 1944 when F-5B, F-5C, and F-5E Lightnings were brought in. All P-38 Lightning variants were used for the remainder of the war.
P-38L 44-53232 at the National Museum of the United States Air Force. The Lockheed P-38 Lighting is an American two-engine fighter used by the United States Army Air Forces and other Allied air forces during World War II. Of the 10,037 planes built, 26 survive today, 22 of which are located in the United States, and 10 of which are airworthy.
The use of gun cameras first became common for gunnery training in the 1920s, though examples were used during World War I by the British Royal Flying Corps.A special version of the Lewis gun, the Hythe Mark III, was manufactured as a camera gun for the Royal Flying Corps, used by trainees in lieu of actual Lewis guns during mock combat exercises.