I feel like the best part of the P-38 was how tough it was and how scared the Germans were of it. They would refer to is as the der Gabelschwanz-Teufel, which means "Fork Tailed Devil" and it had a somewhat good survivability due to the twin engine design and the twin booms letting it absorb a ton of damage. It almost resembles the A-10 Warthog with the twin tail design letting one side function completely by itself. The pilot was also well protected, since he would be in between the engines, putting him out of reach of engine fires and explosions. The one weakness of the plane was its habit of locking the stick in a dive, due to a compressibility lock up, when the plane would reach up to mach 0.68, leaving the pilots with the choice of trying to regain control, either by reaching below 15,000 feet, or using elevator trim to make the plane pull out of the dive, or just nosing into the ground if the plane was low enough.
