‘Lightning’ Still Full of Fight : Aviation: A half-century after its heyday in WWII, a refurbished P-38 soars over Saddleback Mountain.

“If I could win the Lotto,” 71-year-old Bert Shepard mused as he awaited Thursday’s big takeoff at John Wayne Airport, “I’d buy myself a P-38, then I’d go someplace where there’s no flight regulations, and then I’d put on the damnedest show you’d ever see.”

All this from a man who nearly lost his life--and did in fact lose the lower half of his leg--in a P-38 Lightning fighter plane when he was shot down over Germany in World War II.

Its crashes were many. But so too were the Lightning’s triumphs, and it was the triumphs that aviation buffs and old vets like Shepard chose to remember as they watched one of the few still-existing P-38s fly again in the skies over Orange County.

A half-century after its heyday as one of the most popular planes of World War II, a refurbished--but gun-less--P-38 hit speeds of up to 340 m.p.h. in a 25-mile jaunt over Saddleback Mountain, passing its test flight with “flying colors,” its pilot said.

Of the 10,000 P-38s built by Lockheed for the war effort, only about two dozen survive today, said officials at Martin Aviation, the site of Thursday’s test run. And only about a half-dozen are considered flyable.

William Lyon, a retired Air Force general and prominent Southland developer who owns Martin Aviation, bought the P-38L flown Thursday in May, 1990, from the Santa Monica Museum of Flying. The models could be bought after the war--and even many years later--for a few thousand dollars. But with resurging nostalgia driving up prices, Lyon paid $1.5 million.

There was still work to be done, however. After inspecting the plane, “we just found a lot of things lacking that hadn’t been done properly,” said Vern Hickey, director of maintenance at Martin.

Finding parts for a decades-old plane isn’t the easiest task, so Hickey’s people sometimes ended up making their own as they spent hundreds of hours and about $30,000 fixing leaks, reworking the inside and outside of the plane, and making it airworthy.

When the reconstruction was done and the plane had finished its test flight Thursday, the reviews were all raves.

“It passed with flying colors,” said test pilot Steve Hinton, an air show flier from Chino who took the P-38 on several rolls and breakaway maneuvers. “It was great--a beautiful airplane and a pleasure to fly. . . . When you’re flying this, you don’t have a care in the world.”

Lyon, delayed en route from Europe, was unable to attend the test flight. But Martin Aviation President Richard M. Janisse said: “He’s made it real clear that he wants to fly it. . . . The general has a real passion for aviation.”

Passion was the buzzword of the day as about 40 people--many veterans and former P-38 fliers among them--gathered with cameras outside the Martin headquarters to trade war stories and listen to what one called the “sweet hum” of the Lightning.

“We all flew this bird and loved it and had some hair-raising experiences in it,” recalled Tristan Rodriguez, 70, of Newport Beach, an Army test pilot during the war. “Here we are 46 years later, in our various stages of decrepitude, and we all want to see it again.”

Some ex-pilots have asserted that the P-38’s complexity made it a risky plane, with a higher death rate than other aircraft. But they nonetheless defend it vehemently.

What was it about the P-38 that inspired such allegiance? Vets threw out answers like bullets from the .50-caliber Colt-Browning machine gun that protruded from the P-38’s nose:

Its sprawling, twin-fuselage silhouette. Its long-distance flying range, flexibility, and turbocharged engines--propelling it to higher altitudes than most planes. Its recognition among the public as a symbol of air superiority. Its hallowed history as the first Allied fighter plane to fly over Germany--among its many firsts--and its triumph in the shooting down of Japanese naval leader Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto, the architect of the Pearl Harbor bombing.

Shepard, who pitched briefly in the major leagues with an artificial leg after his plane was shot down over Germany, remembers the excitement among people he met when they heard he was a Lightning pilot.

“No other airplane captured the imagination of the public like the P-38 in World War II,” he said.

Said Richard E. Willsie, a former Air Force flier who heads the Burbank-based P-38 National Assn.: “This was the Cadillac of fighters in World War II. . . . And it stirs the hearts of every one of us that ever flew the airplane . . . to see it fly again today.”

Lockheed P-38 Lightning

History: First flown in 1939, the P-38 is remembered as one of the most recognizable World War II-era fighter planes. In the Pacific theater, a group of P-38s downed the plane carrying Japan’s naval leader Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto. A squadron of P-38s was based at Orange County Airport during the war.

Performance: Can fly up to 414 m.p.h. with a maximum range of 2,260 miles.

Size: A single-seater, the P-38 is nearly 38 feet long with a wingspan of 52 feet. The plane’s weight when empty varies from 11,000 to 14,000 pounds in later models.

Armament: One 20-millimeter cannon and four .50-caliber Colt-Browning machine guns in the nose; up to 1,600 pounds of bombs under each inboard wing section.

Status: Only about two dozen of the 10,000 P-38s built during the war are thought to survive today. About six are considered flyable. The P-38L test-flown Thursday is owned by retired Air Force general and Southland developer William Lyon. He bought it for $1.5 million in May, 1990, from the Santa Monica Museum of Flying.

Source: Martin Aviation