In honor of this non-holiday I bring you a P-38 Halloween tale

Epilogue from "Fork-Tailed Devil: The P-38," by Martin Caidin. First published in November 1971 by Ballantine Books.

This is something I have pursued for more than twenty-five years. The kind of story that raises the hackles on the back of your neck. There's an immediate urge to dismiss it as preposterous, impossible.
Because it is preposterous and impossible. Yet the records are there. A document that tells what happened in deliberately cold and official terms. A field in North Africa during the war. An event that took place that was so impossible the commanding officer at the airfield demanded, and got, the signatures of hundreds of witnesses who saw the whole impossible incident. The writer insists on nothing, makes no claims as to truth or impossibility. This is what happened. As it happened. As it was seen and sworn to by hundreds of ground crewmen and pilots, enlisted men and officers.
A flight of P-38s had gone out on patrol. They left to cross the Mediterranean. They mixed it up with German fighters and there was a brief scrap. When the P-38s reformed there was one airplane missing. No one could recall, in the furious melee, watching him go down. They looked around, then they started home.
They arrived back at their field in North Africa. The one pilot who failed to return was listed as missing in action. Not yet, though. Not until his fuel ran out. Not until there wasn't even a glimmer of a chance.
The clock ticked slowly. Then, beyond the point of any fuel. Another two hours went by. They put his name on the list of missing.
It happens. That's war.
Then the air raid alert sounded. Radar picked up a single aircraft, unknown, coming in toward the field at fairly low altitude and high speed. Anti-aircraft guns started tracking. Some pilots ran for their planes.
Then they saw the intruder. A P-38, alone. Coming in along a shallow dive, engines thundering. It failed to respond to radio calls. There was no response to flares fired hurriedly into the air.
A strange approach; that flat and unwavering dive. The P-38 crossed to the center of the field.
Suddenly the airplane seemed to stagger. It fell apart in midair, a tumble of wreckage falling toward the ground. No flash of fire, no explosion. Just the startling breakup of machinery.
They saw a body fall clear of the wreckage. Pilots muttered, called aloud their thoughts without thinking. Then a parachute opened. Silk blossomed full. But the body hung limp in the harness.
Close to the wreckage, the pilot collapsed. No one saw him move. The crash trucks raced to the scene.
Those who came later saw their friends stunned, disbelieving, shaking their heads. They talked about it through the night. The next morning the light of dawn hadn't changed a thing.
It was impossible.
The fuel tanks of the P-38, the same airplane that was hours beyond any possible remaining fuel, were bone dry.
They had been dry for several hours.
The pilot whose parachute opened, that lowered him to his home field, had a bullet hole in his forehead. He had been dead for hours.
Impossible.
But it happened.
And no one knows how.

a reply to: Cohen the Barbarian

spooky. i wonder if he shot himself. maybe he found himself somewhere he thought he could not return from and took his own life to spare him what ever terror was waiting from him outside his cabin

I'm pretty sure I've seen this and two other Caidin tales (Rossi and the haunted biplane) dissected pretty well before. makes a good goosebump story, though!

Freddy Jackson's posthumous appearance in his RAF squadron photo is a good Halloween tale, too!

a reply to: RadioRobert

ohhh yeah that is some of the best ghost evidence ever

What pilot would shoot themselves rather than fly the plane all the way to the scene of the crash? The only way to go is with the stick and throttle in your hands.

a reply to: Cohen the Barbarian
Years ago I bought a cheap book in a supermarket that contained spooky aviation stories, and I remember this being one of them almost verbatim. I'm sure I still have the book buried at my parents house. I must dig it out as it contained many odd stories some of them much stranger than even this. There were stories of apparitions of WWI fighters appearing in the middle of WWII battles and shooting down enemy aircraft as well as a story of a dead bomber pilot talking down his crew member hours after he was deceased. Many strange things have been recorded in aviation. Got to find that book.

a reply to: StratosFear

maybe his aircraft was under something else's control and whatever it was was so bad he decided to take his own life and his captors sent him back one they realized he was dead.

Fascinating not heard this one before thanks

a reply to: macpdm

I have sent you a PM sir

a reply to: thebozeian

If you do, please let us know the relevant info. Sounds like a book I'd like to read.

a reply to: macpdm

Yer welcome. Bought the book, and several other Caidin books, back when they were first issued. I transcribed that epilogue many years ago because it was worth sharing, especially on Halloween.

In 1988 I went to an airshow in Florida. It ended up raining and the show was cancelled. I had a friend who worked at the airport and she got me into one of the hangars where some of the older planes were. As I'm walking through the hangar I see a Japanese Zero fighter. I walk up to it and I'm carefully looking it over when I hear a voice say "Do you like my plane?" It was Martin Caiden. I got a guided tour of the Zero, a B-25 and a P-38.

CSB!

originally posted by: nelloh62
a reply to: macpdm

I have sent you a PM sir

You sir have a reply

How could he have bailed out and opened his parachute if he was dead? I'm no expert - just wondering how that could have happened?

Sorry, haven't been following up. Note that it was a Halloween story.