Dredging up a very old thread here, but I've been engaged in some in-depth research on the P-38 recently, and I have come to the inescapable conclusion that literally everything that has ever been published on the Portuguese P-38 is wrong. Notice in the photo that the aircraft has a side-hinged top canopy section. That absolutely 100% means that this aircraft is not a P-38G. All P-38s up through the P-38F-5-LO (all P-38Fs with FY41 and FY42 serial numbers) had the side-hinged canopy. Starting with the P-38F-13-LO and going all the way through the end of P-38 production in 1945, the upper canopy was hinged at the aft end.
On the day this aircraft arrived in Portugal (15 November 1942), there were actually two P-38s that landed. Every single story (including everything published in Portugal that I have been able to unearth) says that the first aircraft, which was a P-38F-1-LO (41-7587) flown by Capt. Jack Ilfrey, is the one that escaped while the second, P-38G-1-LO (42-12738) landed and was interned and eventually became OK-T/300 in the FAP.
As you can see, the aircraft has the side-hinged canopy, and if you look more closely at the details of the superchargers visible on top of the booms, they also match with the type fitted to the P-38F series. I'm not sure how the two aircraft could possibly have become confused, but stranger things have happened before. I have sifted through literally thousands of P-38 photographs in recent weeks, and I have yet to find a single P-38F-13 or higher with the side-hinged canopy. Not even one.
As for her camouflage colors, that is still the subject of *VERY* heated debated in Portugal. There are those who claim, with no real factual basis, that the aircraft was repainted into RAF day fighter colors (Dark Earth, Dark Green, Sky). It is known that those colors were in chronically short supply in wartime Portugal, so that seems awfully farfetched. There are others who swear it remained in its USAAF Olive Drab over Neutral Gray. I've analyzed the one known photo of it, and I'm convinced that at some point before the photo was taken, her US markings were in fact overpainted with a color that in that one b&w photo appears a slightly lighter tone than the US Olive Drab. As to exactly what color that might have been, barring someone unearthing a pristine Kodachrome from old Uncle Rogério's loft somewhere in Portugal, we will probably never know.
This is a fascinating aircraft with a fascinating history, but I think its history and its identity have been misquoted for going on 77 years now. Of that I am 100% positive.