which eight Japanese troop transports and four escorting destroyers were sunk. Two P-38 aces from the 39th Fighter Squadron were killed on the second day of the battle: Bob Faurot and Hoyt "Curley" Eason (a veteran with five victories who had trained hundreds of pilots, including Dick Bong). In one notable engagement on 3 March 1943, P-38s escorted 13 B-17s (part of an attack including B-25 Mitchells and Beaufighters) as they bombed the Japanese convoy from a medium altitude of , which dispersed the convoy formation and reduced their concentrated antiaircraft firepower. A B-17 was shot down and when Japanese Zero fighters machine-gunned some of the B-17 crew members who bailed out in parachutes, three P-38s promptly dived into action, claiming five Zeros. Killing of Admiral Yamamoto Because of its ability to fly long distances, the Lightning figured in one of the most significant operations in the Pacific Theater – the interception, on 18 April 1943, of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the architect of Japan's naval strategy in the Pacific including the attack on Pearl Harbor. When American codebreakers found out that he was flying to Bougainville Island to conduct a front-line inspection, 16 P-38G Lightnings were sent on a long-range fighter-intercept mission, flying from Guadalcanal at heights of above the ocean to avoid detection. The Lightnings met Yamamoto's two Mitsubishi G4M "Betty" fast bomber transports and six escorting Zeros just as they arrived at the island. The first Betty crashed in the jungle and the second ditched near the coast. The Americans lost one P-38. Japanese search parties found Yamamoto's body at the jungle crash site the next day. Service record The P-38's service record shows mixed results, which may reflect more on its employment than on flaws with the aircraft. The P-38's engine troubles at high altitudes only occurred with the Eighth Air Force. One reason for this was the inadequate cooling systems of the G and H models; the improved P-38 J and L had tremendous success flying out of Italy into Germany at all altitudes. Until the -J-25 variant, P-38s were easily avoided by German fighters because of the lack of dive flaps to counter compressibility in dives. German fighter pilots not wishing to fight would perform the first half of a Split S and continue into steep dives because they knew the Lightnings would be reluctant to follow. On the positive side, having two engines was