Three Lightnings off the plates
The P-38 has always flown in plain bare metal. The same book of profile plates that painted the Mustang has three Lightnings in it: a striped fighter from an English airfield, a group commander's silver ship from the Philippines, and a dark green dragon from the jungles of Burma. Now all three fly over the Brick Sea, and the first one is already yours.
Mama's Boy, from the factory
Pick the Lightning and she's already waiting: Mama's Boy, a P-38J of the 20th Fighter Group's 55th Squadron, flying out of Kingscliffe in England in 1944. The squadron painted its spinners and the noses of both engines a warm chrome yellow, so you can pick her out head-on.
She wears the invasion stripes from D-Day: five bands of black and white wrapped round both tail booms behind the radiators, and five more across each outer wing. There's olive drab along the top of the nose to keep the glare out of the pilot's eyes, and on the side of the nose her name, MAMA'S in yellow over a black disc with BOY inside it.
Every Lightning in the sky flies her paint now. The paint shop calls her by name on the P-38's swatch, and the hangar card shows her turning before you pick anything at all.
MacDonald's Putt Putt Maru: 27 air kills
Colonel Charles MacDonald commanded the 475th Fighter Group, and flew Putt Putt Maru off Leyte in the Philippines. On Christmas Day 1944 he shot down three, and he finished the war with twenty-seven. Earn 27 air kills, his own tally, and his Lightning is yours.
She's polished metal with a big blue 100, shadowed in red, on both engines and both fins. The group's three squadrons flew red, yellow and blue, and as their commander he wore all three: banded round each spinner, slanting round both booms just ahead of the tail, and capping the top and bottom of every fin. The nose is black from the gun ports back to the windscreen, where a board of twenty-four kill flags keeps the score, and PUTT PUTT MARU arches over the guns in blue, trailing orange dots.
Frances' Rebel: 25 ground kills
The 459th Fighter Squadron flew out of India in 1944 and called themselves the Twin Dragons. Their war was strafing: airfields, bridges and trains across Burma. Earn 25 ground kills and Frances' Rebel is yours.
She's dark olive drab over grey. Each engine's nose is painted a brighter green, the dragon's head, and its body writhes down the boom all the way to the fin, every edge picked out in a run of yellow dashes. Low on each engine sits the squadron's yellow lightning bolt in a red disc, her name is lettered in gold on the nose, and each fin wears a white 101 above a pale band.
Where to find them
Both paint only the Lightning, so they only show up in the paint row when the P-38 is your pick. Hover a locked swatch and the hangar card tries it on, so you can see what the kills buy. Climb into something else and that aircraft flies its own factory paint.
The plain paint schemes, like Midnight Reaper, now repaint the whole Lightning too: the nose, both booms and the belly, top to bottom.