50-caliber machine guns and 1 x 20mm cannon was clustered in the nose and gave the Lighting highly focused firepower instead of the spread of bullets fired from the usual wing-mounted guns of other Allied fighters. The central nacelle (fuselage) containing the pilot and weapons was accompanied by twin booms that carried a turbo-supercharged engine on each side and connected by a common tail. It was in the Pacific that the Lightning really made its mark, being the fighter of choice for America’s top aces of World War II. The long-range fighter could also be equipped with drop tanks giving it longer range than any Allied single engine fighters of the early World War II era, making its use in the Pacific Theater where long stretches of ocean lay between take off and landing quite desirable. The greatest of the daylight twin engine piston powered fighters, the Lightning was designed by the master aircraft architect Clarence Kelly Johnson Conceived as a high-speed, high-altitude (44,000 feet!) interceptor, at its introduction the twin-engine Lightning also had a greater range (1,300 combat miles) than any contemporary fighters. P-38H of the AAF Tactical Center, Orlando Army Air Base, Florida, carrying two 1,000 lb bombs during capability tests in March 1944 As always, let us know what planes we should have included on this list that were omitted, or tell us which entries you believe should not deserve a place on the list. The advent of jet engines made the piston powered fighter obsolete soon after World War II and prevented some of the best designed piston powered fighters from achieving the success and glory they might otherwise have achieved. Some of our entries on this list include planes that saw little if any combat but were of exceptional design and could have potentially made a serious difference in combat had the timing of their introduction been different. Drawbacks of the twin engine versus the single engine design often included decreased maneuverability and increased visual signature, as well as unit cost. The second crewman and ability to carry extra electronics such as radar and spotlights made the twin engine “heavy” fighter the usual choice as night fighters. ![]() ![]() Many lists of the “greatest” piston engine fighter planes do not even include twin engine fighters, although that second engine often gave its airframe longer range, higher speed, increased ability to carry heavy armament and electronics, a second crewman, and increased safety factor when flying over vast stretches of ocean. ![]() Far from an anomaly, the P-38 was not the only important twin engine fighter plane to grace the skies during combat operation in World War II and the Korean War, Today we look at 10 of the best 2 engine fighter aircraft from the peak of the piston powered era, the finest such airplanes designed or adapted mainly for air to air combat. Appropriately named, the Lightning was the fastest fighter in the world at that time, being the first to exceed 400 mph in level flight. On January 27, 1939, one of the great American fighter planes of World War II, the Lockheed P-38 Lightning, made its first flight.
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