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Douglas TBD-1 Devastator, BuNo 0308, Markings T-5, US Navy, VT-8, USS Hornet (CV-8), circa 15 May 1942, Photo from the film Torpedo Squadron 8

Check out this totally bodacious Douglas TBD-1 Devastator from VT-8 on USS Hornet in May 1942! Already fitted with twin .30 cal guns and carrying a live torpedo — one of the aircraft lost with Torpedo Squadron 8 during the Battle of Midway just weeks later.

Black pilot, West Point graduate, and combat veteran Wesley Hunt delivered a masterclass response:

“Hey Jasmine… Black pilot here.

I graduated from West Point. I went through Army flight school. I learned to fly the AH-64 Apache. I deployed to combat and flew 55 combat missions over Baghdad.

Nobody handed me a cockpit because of my skin color. Nobody lowered the standards for me.

Suggesting that Black pilots, engineers, doctors, or leaders need special preferences to succeed is not empowering, it’s insulting.

I didn’t want a different standard. I wanted the same standard.”

He ended with a powerful line:

“Merit isn’t racist. Excellence isn’t discriminatory. And reducing every achievement to skin color says far more about your worldview than it does about mine.”

When legendary designers Kelly Johnson and Hall Hibbard cooked up the Lockheed P-38 Lightning in the late 1930s, they weren't just building a fighter. They were breaking the mold. They skipped the standard single-engine blueprint for a radical twin-boom layout powered by two supercharged 1,425 hp Allison V-1710 V12s and concentrated all the firepower straight into the nose. No wing gun convergence issues. Just a concentrated buzzsaw of four .50-cals and a 20mm cannon. By the time the D-model rolled out, it became the first U.S. production aircraft to smash past 400 mph in level flight. 1/3

But that insane speed came with a terrifying price tag. The P-38 was so fast that it became one of the first aircraft in aviation history to slam into the invisible wall of high-subsonic physics: compressibility and violent aerodynamic buffeting. During high-speed dives, airflow over the wings would choke, locking up the controls and causing fatal crashes. Lockheed engineers worked day and night to solve the mysteries of Mach effects. It wasn't just a war against the Axis. In many ways, it was a pioneering and bloody war against high-subsonic physics itself. 2/3

Once tamed, the "Fork-Tailed Devil" went on a global rampage from the Aleutians to North Africa, and from Europe to the Pacific. The Lightning racked up 2,785 aerial victories and produced 162 aces, including America's top two scorers, Richard Bong and Thomas McGuire. Lockheed even stripped the guns from about 1,300 aircraft to create the ultra-fast F-4 and F-5 "Photo Joe" recon birds. More than 10,000 P-38s were built. You could argue it was the Lightning that taught Skunk Works a lesson it still follows today: push the limits and never settle for mediocrity. 3/3