Saturday, January 27, 2007

An Airy Birthday


A piece of silliness - because today is my birthday, and I share it with..... taaa..daaaa..
The Lockheed P-38 Lightning! This aircraft had its maiden flight on the day I was born.

Do we share any characteristics, I wonder ?
"The Lockheed P-38 Lightning was a World War 2 American fighter aircraft. It had twin booms with the engines mounted forward and a single, central nacelle containing the pilot and armament. The engine sounds were a unique, rather quiet "whuffle," because the exhausts were muffled by the turbochargers of the twin Allison V12s. .........The aircraft was used in a number of different roles. It was equipped with droppable fuel tanks under its wings, and used extensively as a long-range escort fighter. The Lightning was also used for dive bombing, level bombing, ground strafing and photo econnaissance missions." (from Wikipedia)

I expect I "whuffled" a lot too, like my twin. I'm not sure my exhaust would have been muffled though! I too have played a number of different roles, some long range - I reckon it's all down to our "splash" chart patterns, Venus in Sagittarius, and of course Sun in Airy Aquarius. Dive bombing is not my style, but with Mars in Scorpio, P-38 Lightning certainly made the most of that planet's position.

It is stated at the aviation-history website that " it was very unusual that the Lightning design progressed beyond the testing stage; such radical concepts seldom achieved production status."

Radical eh? How appropriate for an Aquarian aircraft! Even its name "Lightning" is reminiscent of the Aquarian symbol, which some say depicts lightning.
Happy Birthday Astro-twin!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Whuffle" all you want, Twilight gal - it's your birthday! Many happy (solar) returns to you.

Barbara Palliser said...

Happy Birthday! Hope you have a great day xxx

Twilight said...

Thank you, April and Barbara!
It was a nice day.

Another year done gone! Sigh. :-)