Man they are all the same.. its an aluminum plane, with different colors here and there. The same as rest of the skins..
(whoa feeling woozy.. what happened I think I was possessed for a second there) Nice work Oboe. 
I know what you mean - once my eye settles on a look and balance that looks right to me, its difficult to stray from that, inspite of all the adjustments I make to the different stain and weathering layers. This is the first time I changed the metal in the gun bay and boom access panels - I cut away my color layer and let HTC's original metal show through in those areas. It seemed more noticeable to me I guess. By now I have so many layers in my .psd file that Chaos Theory seems to be operating as well - I'll make a change to something and it will affect something else in a way I hadn't anticipated. I may be pushing the Bright plugin toward its limit, too, not sure.
I do believe it's more authentic-looking than the original, and many panel errors have been fixed and small details added. In the end though, it's as you say, with bare metal P-38s - they're all aluminum, with different colors here and there.
Knite,
I went with a darker mid-level shade on these bare metal skins so the lighter highlights would have more contrast, which I think I learned from studying your fine bare metal '38 skins.
