I believe it was scrapped after a taxi accident in 1945. Just do an online search, there is a great deal of information, pictures, and video out there.

Here is a summary: (About halfway down the page)

http://p38assn.org/newsletters/August08/aug08.htm

Don’t confuse the original “Yippee” with later planes flying with her colors. I know at least one aircraft did that. “Scatterbrain Kid” #43-50281 was painted up as “Yippee” in the 1960’s but was lost in a crash around 1974.

On a related note, I am trying to see if any Vultee Nashville Lightnings still exist. I found an old book on the history of Nashville, TN. and it has a picture of the assembly line and stated that the aircraft assembly line (moving) was first used at the Vultee planet in Nashville. I have not been abel to confirm this yet though. The contract was cancelled due to the end of the war after building only 113 P-38L-5-VN models. I think Lefty Gardners’ Lightning was the last or one of the last surviving Nashville Lightnings, and I’ve lost track of what happened to the wreck.

Looks like a Kittyhawk III (P-40M) doesn’t it? It appears to have 6 guns in the wings. The RAF had nearly 600 of these.

I’m going to say it’s a model…..but (if it is) it was made by an exceptionally skilled modeller!

In the crash-landing could the propeller, hub, reduction-gear casing and the front of the airframe be torn off like that and leave the rest of the cowlings so undamaged? I don’t know but I’d expect to see some of the upper engine cowlings at least dislodged.

I hope I’m wrong; I hope it isn’t a model!

Bear in mind that the terrain we see in the photos could be very different from the surface it landed on nearly 70 years ago. It doesn’t appear that the engine was under power when it came down, and its nose also is smashed hard up against a rock, which may have been just beneath the sands when this aircraft came to a stop. It might have been a fairly smooth slide along the sand until it caught that rock with its chin. The leading edge of the port wing is banged up but the starboard side looks to be in very good condition.

Only if they can get to it, and know of it. There are still many areas of the deep desert where nomads and Bedouin don’t go. That could be a clue as to the location of this aircraft. Or maybe it’s just a mirage.

we have got members from all over the world. any polish out there who could interpret???,

I posted the OP’s first two lines earlier in the thread and someone posted the whole page yesterday in this thread. Or you could use Google Translate like we did if you want to be sure for yourself.

They are talking about the Burmese Spitfires today.

its all fishy to me. was the photograther on his/her own?. normaly with discoveries like this there is always one or two people mooching around in the photo`s.

total lack of sqn code and no photo of the tail serial seems realy odd. any ref number or detail you would try to record. does not matter if it was an old lorry or a sunken ship.

Who says he didn’t write down serial numbers or identifying numbers? Many parts of that airframe have been sandblasted down to bare metal. What is so surprising about someone releasing pictures without positive identifying numbers? Intentional or not? I would do the same thing until I had time to do more research myself. Likewise with people in the photos. I seriously doubt that these are the only pictures this person took, and we know that this isn’t someone alone in the desert. Maybe they didn’t want their faces show just yet, or at all. Just because they didn’t post GPS coordinates and serial numbers to a modeling site? Petrol exploration has led to many of these discoveries over the years.

I’d say that’s very real, not a model. I’ve seen models that you couldn’t tell were models from their photographs, but that instrument panel is not one of those. Blow it up and take a good close look at the details and use period pictures from the manuals for comparison. Real deal. The pictures were taken with a modern digital but the EXIF data has been stripped, so no location clues there.

Here is what the OP said:

“My friend works in the Sahara looking for oil and gas. Recently, however, they came upon something completely different”

“The plane lay so many years is not bothered by anyone. The finder of the wreck told the RAF and were able to identify aircraft. We do not know why he was only at that particular place. It may puzzle some time find a solution.”

We know men and aircraft can lay undiscovered in the desert for very long periods. Many are swallowed up by the sands never to be seen again, some get spit back out decades later, or somebody stumbles upon them. (Remember LBG!) I’ll bet this aircraft has been visited by petrol companies a few times since it crashed and I’ll bet the RAF might have visited the site at least once themselves.

Now who knows the serial?

PS: Here’s a really interesting story of another record attempt that ended badly for the pilot, discovered 29 years after he came down in the middle of nowhere and simply dried out.

http://www.historynet.com/bill-lancaster-lost-in-the-sahara-after-attempting-to-break-the-england-cape-town-flight-speed-record.htm