intake is put into operation by means
of opening a butterfly valve and
closing the valve to the main air inlet.
This second air opening is a screen
mesh affair that is about a foot high
and two feet-long.”Forty-five 78th Fighter Group
Lightnings were flown to Langford
Lodge for this purpose on 26
January. En route two of them
collided while
flying in thick
cloud over
Lancashire,
near England’s
northwest
coast: P-38G-
10-LO 42-
12905, flown
by 1st Lt.
Henry L.
Perrycould be ferried to that location,
they had to be flown back (!) to
BAD 3 at Langford Lodge to be
modified with special air filters to
protect the aircraft’s engines and
inner workings from the insidious
Saharan sand. The 1st and 14th
FG’s P-38s had undergone this
procedure three months earlier,
just before their move to North
Africa. In his diary entry for 27
October 1942, 1st Lt. William
E. Schottelkorb of the latter
Group’s 48th FS described these
modifications in some detail:“Air filters are being installed on
our planes, under the booms and in
the wheel wells. When the wheel doors
are closed, when the plane is flying,
the normal air intake scoop on the
side is in operation. When a landing
is affected and the boom doors or
wheels doors are open, then a
separate airwhen the 83rd FS’ 2nd Lt. Arthur S.
Lovera (who later served with the 14th
FG in the MTO) was involved in a
takeoff accident. This aircraft, P-38F-
15-LO 43-2167, was repaired and
subsequently flown to Africa, where it
was assigned to the 82nd FG.
It was sometime during the third
week of January that the Group
learned that all of its P-38s were
going to be transferred to Africa. But
before they
22 AIR CLASSICS/August 2022
Patch for the 83rd FS.