Wright-Patterson Museum visit, Pt. 2.

Adding to the list of historic planes that I'd love to be flying, we have Wright-Pat's Lockheed P-38L.
Over 10,000 were built, and less than a dozen remain flyable today.
Here's an Italian Macchi MC.200 Saetta. Really not bad for it's time. This one was captured after being abandoned at Banghazi airfield following the battle of El Alamein. "Never fired, only abandoned once."

Germany was no slouch when it came to building fighters, as this Focke-Wulf FW-190D-9 proved. This one (below) was captured at the end of the war and brought back for testing, which is why it's among the very few survivors of it's type today.
And what aircraft collection would be complete without a North American P-51D Mustang? Well mine, obviously, since flyable survivors start out at several hundred thousand dollars each. Again to my parents...the government was surplussing these out for about a grand each after Korea. A couple of these bought and put away for the me that would have been along eventually would have made for a fine graduation present, eh? Just saying...
And then there's the German Me-262A, the first operational jet fighter that might well have taken the skies over Europe back from the Allies had Hitler built more of them and stopped trying to use the ones he had as bombers.This beauty was over 100MPH faster than any other fighter and packed a deadly punch with four 30mm cannons in it's nose. Too few and too late to affect the war's outcome, it was a prelude of things to come.

And this post is also a prelude of things to come. More to follow.