The North American P-51 Mustang
The North American P-51 Mustang was truly an aircraft of the Second World War.
By that, I mean that it was built for the demands of that day and under circumstances of that day.
It was first devised when North American Aviation approached the Royal Air Force(RAF) and asked if they would like their B-25 Mitchell medium bombers, and instead the RAF asked them if they could start producing Curtiss P-40 Warhawks, another legendary fighter that I'll write about another time. The team at NAA told the RAF that they could have a better armed, faster, cheaper fighter built in short order, even with the same engine, if they so choosed. The RAF requested that they finish the prototype in 120 days, and the team at NAA scrambled to build it. They did such a good job, in fact, that they actually got the prototype airframe done in only 102 days, with 18 to spare, and it was rolled out on September 9th, 1940. There was still work to be done to get the prototype airworthy, but NAA proved their point. They had unwittingly built arguably the greatest piston-engined fighter in all of history, and did so in just over 100 days. The prototype flew on October 26th, 1940, exactly 80 years ago at the time of this publication.
The P-51 used the same Allison V-1710 engine that the P-40 used, as well as legendary aircraft like the Lockheed P-38 Lightning and Bell P-39 Airacobra, also the NAA F-82 Twin Mustang, all noteworthy aircraft I'll write about eventually. It used this engine in models up to D, when it switched to the Packard license-built version of the supercharged Merlin 66 engine, which is now iconic to the P-51 as well as the Spitfire that it was originally used for. For this publication, I'll refer mostly to the D model, which was the most iconic of the P-51s.
Its features included thin laminar-flow wings, sleek nose, bubble canopy for wide field of view, and belly-mounted oil-cooler, which was more aerodynamic than the nose-mounted cooler found in earlier models. It had 6x Browning M1 .50 caliber machine guns mounted sideways in the wings, since the wings were just that thin. It had multiple hardpoints for bombs and, later, unguided "Tiny Tim" rockets. It also had either a centerline drop tank or two wing-monted drop tanks, increasing the range by a long margin.
Its service was not limited to only one war, rather it was used in multiple wars, by multiple countries. Of course, in the jet age, it wasn't much of a fighter as it was in WWII, but it still served as a crucial attack airplane, with its unmatched performance, and could hover over a battlefield for extended periods of time, which was a requirement of the counter-insurgency operations of that day.
A modernized version of the P-51, called the Piper PA-48 Enforcer, was larger and shared less than 10% of its airframe with the P-51D, so it was re-designated. It had a turboprop engine and modernized avionics, but wasn't chosen for the counter-insurgency (COIN) operation challenge.
Today there are many P-51s that operate as display models or warbirds, and its legacy has been preserved and will be for future generations, its legacy untouched by destruction.
The P-51 has a long legacy, of many admirers. Pilots of the P-51 have said that the controls are exactly where you want them, its flight characteristics are unmatched, and it's the greatest airplane they've ever flown. Enemies of the P-51 have said similar things, and it struck fear into the opposite side of the dogfight whenever an enemy pilot saw one. The P-51 has been admired by pilots and non-pilots alike, myself included, no matter what side of the war they'd been on.
JAS REXUS, TWO-THOUSAND AND TWENTY
