Джонсон сфотографирован в своем офисе в Бербанке рядом с моделью истребителя P-80A Shooting Star.
By the end of 1943, Johnson had turned his attention to the development of the USA’s first jet fighter, the P-80; he is seen here with a model of it. Johnson went on to lead the design teams on many highly innovative aircraft over the next four decades, including the F-104 Starfighter, JetStar business jet and the U-2 and SR-71 spyplanes.

The second YP-38 in the windtunnel at Langley

The second YP-38, serial 39-690, mounted in NACA’s full-scale windtunnel at Langley in December 1941, fitted with an extended fuselage pod and a re-profiled inner wing section of deeper chord. It was these modifications that Guryansky and Preston claimed raised the aircraft’s critical Mach by some 44 m.p.h. (70km/h).

The sole P-38 “Swordfish”, serial 41-2048, which was a standard P-38E taken from the production line and converted into a two-seater with dual controls fitted into an extended fuselage pod, as per NACA’s recommendations. It was later used for testing enlarged laminar-flow wing sections, as seen here outboard of the engine nacelles.

P-38 in one of a series of posed photographs of Lockheed personnel with the flaps, designed to reinforce the notion that the flap was a Lockheed idea; it was in fact the result of research undertaken by NACA at Ames. Burcham was killed in the third prototype YP-80 in October 1944.

Американский "Лайтнинг", как и британский "Москито" являлись на момент своего рождения сосредоточием технических новшеств, что и предопределило высокие характеристики обеих машин, но при этом изначально предназначались для решения различных задач. Однако именно высокие летно-технические данные этих самолетов позволяли их эффективно использовать при решении различных задач.
The futuristic - but aerodynamically troubled - Lockheed P-38 Lightning.

Another view of the re-profiled wing and fuselage pod extension fitted to the second YP-38 at Langley in December 1941.

The 1/6th-scale Lightning model provided by Lockheed, under test with a lengthened fuselage in the 16ft high-speed windtunnel at the NACA Ames Laboratory in California in 1942. The similarity to the configuration of Lockheed’s modified "Swordfish" high-speed research P-38 variant, which emerged shortly afterwards, is striking.

Illustrations of the proposal arising from NACA research engineer Albert Erickson’s October 1942 paper, in which he suggested modifying and extending the P-38’s fuselage pod.

The Dutch Fokker G.I made its first flight in March 1937 and showed a great deal of promise as an adaptable heavy fighter/ground-attack aircraft. It shared the twin-boom configuration with the P-38 but, significantly, had a fuselage pod that extended beyond the wing trailing edge. During trials it was specifically noted that the G.I could be dived at high speed - in marked contrast to its American contemporary.