Artist's commentary
Lockheed P-38 Lightning was a heavy fighter aircraft of the United States Army Air Corps.
It was known in Europe as "fork-tailed devil" because of its distinctive twin booms and superior speed and firepower. It played an active role mainly in ground strafing, where it was a powerful menace.
However, it was equipped with superchargers, and while it could reach high speeds at high altitudes, it performed poorly at low altitudes, and its maneuverability was also extremely poor. Thus it was repeatedly defeated by the Japanese Zero fighters in the dogfights of the Asia-Pacific War. The P-38 was an easy target for the Japanese, and was nicknamed "Pero-Hachi," a parody on the Japanese pronunciation of its name, "Pii Sanjuu-Hachi." (In Japanese, "perori" is an onomatopoeic word meaning "gobble up.")
However, when used in tactics making the best of its virtues of high speed and firepower, it showed its full ability. And in the skies over Bougainville Island, the Lightnings pursued and shot down two Mitsubishi G4M bombers with Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku, thus wiping out the Commander of the Imperial Japanese Navy.
After this in the US Army, once it established its role of avoiding hand-to-hand fighting and bringing in "hit and away" tactics, the P-38 was able to demonstrate its existing strengths and become a serious threat to the Japanese troops.