Amazing that a few of those P-38s still exist. My dad was a test pilot 
for the B-17s, B-22s and P-38s that came off the WWII production lines 
at Offit Air Field near Omaha.

Lindberg taught my dad to fly at Arrow Airfield southeast of Lincoln, 
Nebraska, I think that was 1922 or '23. Lindberg himself had learned to 
fly there just the summer before, and was paying off his debt to the 
field operator by teaching others to fly the next summer. My dad learned 
to fly in a Ginny biplane from WWI. Though my dad did not go into flying 
professionally it was always a side interest, and my older brother built 
flying models from scratch. My dad would drive us out to Arrow Airfield 
where they still repaired wooden planes in the 1950s and buy billets of 
spruce, bamboo and balsa, yards of silk and quarts of dope. On these 
visits to the airfield my brother and I would sit on the end of the work 
bench in the hanger and listen as my dad and the old aircraft buzzards 
there sling flight stories back and forth. My brother would bring a 
half-built model and ask them questions about construction details. Back 
at our shop dad would rip the billets into thin strips and slivers on 
the table saw. As a little kid I had fun watching my older brother build 
and fly his models, but never built one myself. When I was in 10th grade 
I joined the Civil Air Patrol and learned to fly in a Piper Cub and, 
most amazingly, in a Ginny biplane, the same model my dad had learned 
in. Those biplanes are like kites and you land one to a standing stop in 
only 20-30 yards of runway. By that time the Arrow field was defunct. We 
flew out of the general aviation field that was part of the US Air Force 
Base north of Lincoln. One mission I few on, as co-navigator, was 
air-delivery of 50 tons of hay to ranchers in western Nebraska for their 
stranded cattle after a particularly hard blizzard. There were a lot of 
WWI stories on that flight.

My dad passed away in 1989. We buried him in a cemetery that was 
developed in the 1970s on the land that had been the old Arrow Airfield.

John

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