Being a Canadian, how did I become so enthused with the Lightning and not the Mosquito? Like many young boys in his early teens and building model aircraft. I started with a Harvard/T-6 Texan, then a Mosquito and a P-38 Lightning. (of course I went on to build other aeroplanes, ships and cars) I selected the Harvard/T-6 Texan like any young pilot should, then the Mosquito for three reasons... first RCAF pilots flew it, and second, it didn't take a young kid long to know that grouping guns in the nose of an aeroplane is far better than trying to converge fire from guns in the wings. It was fast too!

And now the reason for my third selection.. my favourite aircraft.

I was looking for a hero or two in aviation. Sure, there was the first Canadian to pilot a plane... Frederick Baldwin. On March 12, 1908 in New York State, Baldwin flew the Red Wing designed by Alexander Graham Bell. And there was the first flight in Canada and in the British Empire by John A. D. McCurdy in the Silver Dart on February 23, 1909, in Nova Scotia. Also, the famous Canadian bush pilot, Max Ward, who created one of Canada's biggest airlines... WardAir (Max Ward is "retired" but still likes to get his hands on the controls of a bush plane now and then).

But I was also looking for a fighter pilot or two. No one in the early 1960's could tell me of any RCAF aces from World War II. I wrote the RCAF and the Canadian Legion without any help. The models of Spitfires, Hurricanes, and Mosquitos were all RAF with little or no information. However, models of the Lightning had biographies of many famous pilots. Exploits of the Lightning aces and pilots... Richard Bong, Thomas McGuire, Charles MacDonald, Jay Robbins, Jack Ilfrey, John Michell, Rex Barber, etc., really sparked my interest. And Charles A. Lindbergh shot down a Japanese fighter while flying a Lightning during an endurance test flight!

Thus I switched my "favourite aircraft loyalty" from the Mosquito to the P-38 Lightning and the people involved with it.

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