It's pretty well-known that women had a tremendous role in fabricating (and testing and ferrying) America's WWII aircraft, but these are just neat photos, IMHO. It was a win-win situation: the ladies filled a huge gap in the labor force with so many able-bodied men overseas, and they had much-needed income, as many of those men were the sole income-providers: fathers, brothers, husbands. They also turned out, for the most part, to be really good at building- and flying- these machines, including, of course, the P-38. And women did plenty of number-crunching in the design departments... a lot of manpower was required for computation in those days.
This looks more like a staged shot, because she's not really dressed for work, and she's not paying much attention to what she's doing...
The caption for this one mentions that many of these young women left notes and things in the aircraft, either just to warm the pilots' spirits or maybe to snag a husband.
This is a classic: a glamour shot of a pretty unglamorous task: installing the hundreds of little screws on these aircraft.
Also shows, again, how much of the final assembly work was done outdoors as Lockheed rushed to produce as many Lightnings as possible.
Next: part 4- versatility and durability
