A P-38 question

Thanks for the info, guys!  I got the Hobby Boss P-38L and was thinking about getting some aftermarket decals for it.  I wasn't sure if I would be limitted to ONLY P-38L decals or if I could get some for the P-38J as well.  

I don't know a whole lot about the P-38 but I thought that, for the most part, the -J and the -L were virtually similar.  The exceptions, of course, being the location of the landing light and the gun camera.  I don't have the greatest scratch-building skills but I figured the relocation of the light and camera were things I could handle.  If it were any other major structural differences between the two, then I would have just stuck with the P-38L variant and their respective markings.

It's probably been a good dozen years since I built my last P-38.  It was a Hasegawa and it didn't end well.  LOL!  Before that, I think the only other P-38 I built was back when I was a teenager using the Monogram kit (which I actually enjoyed more).  Getting everything to line up was a challenge no matter which kit I had.  I wanted to see if or how the Hobby Boss kit stacked up in terms of ease and fun.

Yes, the dive flaps were developed for the late Js and were sent to units as a field retrofit kit for earlier Js. I forgoty about the landing light changing position as well. They were standard on the L on the production line. One had it on the wing leading edge while the other had it on the wing lower surface.  The L had more powerful engines while the J had the same engines as earlier variants, but with a new chin fairing for the repostioned turbocharger ducting. Also late Js had fuel tanks put in the wings to extend their range where the earlier P-38s had that ducting.

If I'm not mistaking, the landing light changing locations and the compressibility flaps were changes that were implimented on the block-25 J models. So late Js and Ls were more or less cosmetically identical aside from the rocket racks.

The p-38L had a landing light in the port leading edge and underwing rocket racks.   The P-38J had neither.  This information I found in American Fighters of World War Two, Doubleday, 1979.

That would make Monograms 1/48 kit an L, not a J.

Most of the differences were internal is my understading. One visual difference is the L had some high speed dive flaps installed on the lower wing surfaces outboard of the engine nacelles to address the problem of dive recovery. They were prominent if you know to look for them. Another was the placement of the gun camera. On one version it was on the forward end of one of the bomb/tank pylons (left IIRC). On the other version it was in the leading edge of the wing between the cockpit pod and an engine nacelle (the left IIRC)