P-38J 1st FG, 27 FS serial number

[Stig Jarlevik]

Interesting Frank

I never bought Bodie's book since I subscribed to his Wings/Airpower mags back then and money was very tight. His Skybolt article in many parts are many hundred pages and I never thought he was adding new stuff to the book. Anyway I trust the c/n details are the same as used by Francillon in the Putnam Lockheed book.

The Lockheed c/n looks to me like 2815, which would make it much more in line with the Bodie figures.

No idea how Lockheed applied their c/n vs USAAF serial numbers, but I doubt they were using some kind of 'Lotto' system... . Some basic system must after all exist.

If applied upon order receipt I guess one would expect them to be in order, but there could be more to it than that. What we see are the final figures but with wartime orders you never really know the behind the scene dramas. Many production lines complicated matters as were airframes taken away from the production line for various reasons, and so on. Most were probably re-instated again while others were not. With such a scenario we can have the original c/n 2815 taken away and scrapped with the same plate now attached to an aircraft much further back on the production line. Did it happen? No idea... It is easy for us to then ask, why did not Lockheed make notes about it? Perhaps it was easier not to complicate the paperwork?...

I have never seen a Lockheed P-38 mfg plate, but did they stamp the USAAF serial number on it? When was that plate attached to the airframe? Do we know that every airframe which received a correct plate actually got the same tail number painted? With so many hundred of thousands aircraft delivered by the US Industry in WW 2 human mistakes were just bound to happen.

I settled a long time ago that the situation is....well, complicated, and should I add very fascinating!!

Cheers
Stig