Operation Vengeance.

I have been looking everywhere for the flight plan of this flight. Everything I read says they flew 600 miles on the inbound portion of the flight but the only reference I can find that gives the flight plan comes up about 180 miles short.
Battles Long Ago: Operation Vengeance 1943: http://firedirectioncenter.blogspot.com/2012/04/battles-long-ago-operation-vengeance.html
(I even considered that it was nautical miles instead of statute miles and even that comes up about 100 miles short.)

Anyone know of a source that lists the flight plan distances and flight times?


Wheels

I remember reading a book once that had that info in it IIRC. It's been in the last 20 years (which is not helpful) and I don't remember the name of the hard back book (which is even less helpful).

Amazon has a few books on the subject..BTW flying "Straight From The Farm" good mod

"Meanwhile, in the sunny greenhouse cockpit of Mitch’s Squitch, lulled by the engine drone and the glassy-smooth sea speeding just beneath the plane’s nose, Mitchell was trying not to doze. Constantly checking his GI wristwatch and specially mounted Navy compass, at 0820 he fixed their position at slightly more than 180 miles west of Henderson. He then waved his wings to signal a turn. Twenty-seven minutes on course 290 degrees. Thirty-eight minutes on course 305 degrees. At 0925, less than 20 miles off Bougainville, they made their final turn to the northeast, under cover of a low-level haze."
They took off from Guadalcanal at 0710. So, maybe you can work something out from that.

Dick Bong and Tommy Lynch flew a similar mission. Broken codes, plane full of generals and staff officers, quick scramble to intercept etc. Bong got the kill but declined to have it counted. They didn't count ground kills in the Pacific and Bong argued that the plane was on the ground when he destroyed it.

"Catch Em If You Can

Bong and Lynch are sent on a mission to shoot down a Betty full of generals.

Description from Mission 69 of America's Ace of Aces campaign:

"In the afternoon of February 27 we picked up and decoded a Japanese radio message which gave the time of arrival at the Wewak airdrome of a transport plane carrying some staff officers from Rabaul. By the time we got the information, it was almost too late for and interception, but we gave the information to Bong and Lynch, who hurriedly took off and flew wide open all the way, arriving over Wewak about two minutes before the Jap plane was about to land. The inconsiderate pilot, however, was ahead of schedule, he had already landed, and was taxiing down the runway.

The score atthe end of the attack was a major general, a brigadier general, and a whole staff of high ranking officers." -General Kenney-

General Kenney tried to talk Bong into taking credit for a kill but Dick would have none of it. In the Pacific theatre you didn't get credit for aircraft destroyed on the ground, only in the air. Bong was asked "Maybe the plane's wheels had touched and it had bounced back into the air temporarily?'

Bong turned down the easy kill even though he was pressured to take it."

The books I used to recreate all of the missions Bong scored on mentions the operation you referenced Wheels. I won't be home for a couple of weeks and I'll try and find any pertinent info.

Thanks Pooch but there are too many unknowns for me to figure it out. Without a flight speed or distances with the headings I personally don't have enough information to calculate.

For them to go 600 miles in 144 minutes, 0710 to 0934, they would have needed to average 250 mph.
When I do the calculations on the site that gives the headings and distances, linked in my first post, they come out at around a 200 mph average. This gives a range of roughly 480 miles. That is a huge difference.

Death by P-38: http://www.donhollway.com/yamamoto/ Has a nice map of the flight path but no headings or flight speeds.
Death by P-38: http://www.historynet.com/death-by-p-38.htm The associated article.

Best I can do so far when I take all the information I can find online and the map on Don Holloway's Yamamoto page.



Wheels

This is a mission map I made using Google Earth and mission information from "13th Fighter Command in World War II: Air Combat over Guadalcanal and the Solomons" by William Wolf, 2004, Schiffer Publishing.

For IL-2 flight sim, I also made a mission based on this flight path. Open it in full mission editor to see the flight path that includes the magnetic declination of the Guadalcanal area in 1943. This mission is here: P-38_Operation Vengeance Mission.rar (For use in v4.13.4 only. The timing does not work well in earlier 4.10 - 4.12 due to changes in the game's A.I. and flight models)

seediffy

It really was an absolutely amazing piece of navigating, considering that it was all over water. It was so close to the extreme range of the Lightning that one of Lanphier's engines quit from lack of fuel as he taxied in after landing.