The Nerd
Airman
hey, im looking for info on the Lockheed XP-58 Chain Lightning, like what is it, what was it used for, and so on. Any pics would be awsome.
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In 1940, Lockheed and USAAF reached an agreement that Lockheed was enable to sell the P-38 to England and France, with responsibility for designing a more advanced version of P-38 for US needs. The configuration of this advanced lightning was similar to P-38, central cabin between twin engine-buried booms but larger sized and more powerful armaments. The designation XP-58 Chain Lightning was given to the project. The original design was a single seat pursuit airplane, then requested to change into a double seats attacker, then into a bomber, and then into a tank buster, and finally into a bomber destroyer. The power-plants and armament configurations were also kept changing until 1943. The XP-58 prototype were finally rolled out and made its first flight in June 1944 after 4 years its design was begun. After completed 25 test flights in 1945, the XP-58 program was cancelled not only by the engine problems, but also USAAF had no further needs for the bomber destroyers.
syscom3 said:It looks like a P61.
the lancaster kicks ass said:big, fat and hairy??
FLYBOYJ said:the lancaster kicks ass said:big, fat and hairy??
And leaked all over the place!
Yes and no - it was a whole new airframe and was supposed to be a bomber killer.So the XP-58 Chain Lighting was proposed as an updated version to improve the P-38 Lightning?
I actually have quite a bit of photographic information on this beast. At the next conjunction of time and memory I will post. Got an interesting picture of the jump seat behind the pilot from the museum at Edwards AFB.