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Re: US cargo aircraft shot down January 1944
A March 1944 date seems likely for the transport in question. The C-54 was downed when Lockheed test pilot Tony LeVier was touring 8th Air Force bases with a specially equipped P-38, retrofitted with anti-compressibility flaps.
The Lightning combat groups were supposed to get the same modification to their planes, but the 200 sets of dive flaps were lost with the crashed C-54. One source says the C-54 was misidentified as a FW-200 and shot down by the RAF. Possibly there is more information in the biographies of LeVier or Kelly Johnson.
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