My Uncle John Mercer served in WWII as an armorer in a P-38 squadron. He was based in Foggia, Italy. Uncle John passed away a few years ago. I never got to see him as much as I would have liked since we lived far away from each other.
Of course, whenever he did visit I would listen intently to his stories. The two that stand out in my mind involved accidents he witnessed. The first time was when a B-17 was landing at the field. There was a layer of low haze which the pilot mistook for the ground. As a result, he flared too high and the Fort fell to the earth. It was completely destroyed and none of the crew survived. The second accident involved a P-38 that was taking off carrying two 1,000lb bombs. Uncle John recalled that the -38s had a difficult time getting airborne with that much weight on board. One of them didn't make it and went off the end of the runway. Again, the aircraft was destroyed and sadly, the pilot was killed.
Uncle John's P-38 was named "Mergie Gal". The name was painted on the right side of the nose, and if I recall correctly, the Lightning's pilot had another name painted on the left side (was this common practice for air and ground crews to "share" an aircraft by giving it two separate names?).
He had told me the squadron he was part of, but I can't remember (I was just a kid back then, and wanted to hear more about airplanes flying). Looking at the pictures I have, I see that they were either L or J models (I guess "L"s, as they were more common, right??).
Here's some of the pictures I have that Uncle John took. They're scans of scans, so I apologize if the quality isn't that great. I don't know what colours the aircraft carried as squadron markings. They look like red spinners and tail flashes, maybe.
If there's any resident P-38 experts who can add some insight I'd love to hear it. Speculate if you like, too. I'm not researching a book here, I just like talking about old airplanes. Sorry if they're too big or small, I haven't posted pics here before.