Cockpit of the P-51C | P-51 Mustang Performance

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ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF THE MUSTANG by J. Leland Atwood

Former Chairman, North American Aviation and Rockwell International

The Supermarine Spitfire and its stablemate, the Hawker Hurricane, are probably the most appreciated defensive weapons in the history of civilization for very good reasons. These airplanes—with their elegant Rolls-Royce engines—enabled the determined RAF to stand off certain defeat and occupation. The legendary Reginald Mitchell, leader of the Supermarine design team, worked to the end of his life perfecting the Spitfire, and Sidney Camm of Hawker brought in the Hurricane, largely with private financial backing of T.O.M. Sopwith. Himself a World War I airplane designer. These events were surely high on the list of the accomplishments in England's "Finest Hour," and no later achievements in this category can be classified as in the same degree of effectiveness or timeliness. The Spitfire, in particular, with somewhat more performance, is especially memorable and symbolic.

But the RAF (the "Few*) made its Thermopylae stand in 1940, and the war lasted for nearly five more long and bitter years. The United States was able to mobilize its capabilities, including massive air power and some very good airplanes in great numbers.

I participated as an aeronautical engineer and manager and would like to describe the origin and some aspects of the P-51 "Mustang" fighter as one of those airplanes. I do not intend to elaborate on its capabilities as a first line warplane with the speed and range to carry air combat successfully to the heart of Germany—which is a well-known matter of record—but rather on some interesting sequences leading to its origination and some technical aspects of its design which, hopefully, I can describe in reasonable language without integral signs or complex equations—although I can not eliminate mathematics entirely and still explain the design rationale.

Credit for this section

To begin with, the Mustang had a large British component. In 1940, it was underwritten by England with their very scarce U.S. dollars (12 million of them), utilized Farnborough research in design, and in its final and best configuration it used the incomparable Rolls V-1650 "Merlin" engine. It was, of course, taken over by the U.S. Army Air Corps, which eventually purchased and financed its large wartime production and supervised its specifications and utilization.

Briefly, the British and French both began to buy airplanes and engines in the U.S. in 1938. and shortly orders were being issued for this equipment, including engines from Pratt and Whitney, Allison, and Wright Aeronautical, planes from Lockheed, Douglas, North American, Curtiss (including P-40 fighters), and others. The British shortly established a Purchasing Commission, first under Mr. Arthur Purvis, who was replaced in 1939 by Sir Henry Self. Offices were taken at 15 Broad Street, New York, and staff were assigned.

North American Aviation (now Rockwell International) operated In Inglewood. California, adjacent to Mines Field, which is now Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), and our British orders were for advanced trainer planes, a version of the Air Corps AT-6, which the British named the "Harvard." These, for the times, were relatively large orders—eventually involving several hundred planes—and were naturally very important for North American, leading to greatly increased employment and additional buildings.

As we went into 1939, concerns about the possibility of war increased and our military received larger appropriations and began to place orders. In mid-1939, North American received a large order for our B-25 medium bomber and expansion continued at a rapid rate. This was true of the rest of the industry also, and capacity was getting to be the problem.

North American Aviation, though a derivative of some antecedent organizations, was a relatively young company. Through earlier investments and involvements, the General Motors Corporation owned about 30% of the stock and effectively controlled the company. Ernest R Breech, a General Motors vice president, was designated chairman—although he never served in an operating capacity. In 1934, he recruited James Howard ("Dutch") Kindelberger, a vice president of Douglas, as president and chief officer. I worked for Douglas at that time under Dutch as a mathematical analyst and component designer, and he recruited me to come with him as chief engineer at North American. Dutch was just 39 years old, and most of the rest of us were some ten years younger.

We were quite successful with the advanced trainer line, including the Harvard, and had built a couple of medium bomber and attack plane prototypes, which didn't really get anywhere until the B-25 order. So in 1939, we were booked up and expanding, and a transition in the organization was shaping up. Dutch had a lot of balls in the air with contracts, building plans, machinery orders, financial requirements, personnel expansion, government interfaces, etc., and after trying and failing a couple of times to get a competent deputy, he began to move me into that position. In my place, Raymond Rice became chief engineer, and I ended up with the title of first vice president. This transition was somewhat gradual, but by the latter part of 1939, it was rather complete—although I kept in very close touch with the engineering work.

At about this time, we first heard about the possibility of taking an order for supplementary production of the Curtiss P-40 fighter planes. Of course, fighters were an obvious requirement and in 1939 the P-40 was considered a good contemporary plane in this country, but it had some drawbacks . The Allison V-1710 engine had only a single-stage supercharger, and its critical altitude for maximum speed was only about 12,000 feet. While not in the high-altitude interceptor class, it could be used for low-altitude combat and ground attack missions. To me, however, the radiator and cooling system seemed to be most inefficient and poorly located—with the glycol and oil radiators under the rear of the engine and partially cowled. Also, Dutch felt we were heavily loaded as far as tooling and production were concerned and we would have a hard time coping with Curtiss drawings, manufacturing standards and tooling, at least for some time.

As chief engineer, I had regularly reviewed the NACA (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, later NASA) reports on aerodynamics and related subjects, and in 1939, one came to my attention that was a review of some British experimental radiator work at Farnborough, a research establishment in England. An investigator named Meredith had experimented with energy recovery from airplane radiators. This, of course, was not anything new conceptually, since energy recovery in steam and heat engines was common, as in triple- expansion cylinder engines and in turbine applications, but these all started at relatively high temperatures. In reciprocating internal combustion engines, the "coolant-out" temperature cannot be allowed to exceed something like 250° Fahrenheit, which is at about the temperature of the end of a heat recovery cycle in a steam engine. However, Meredith experimented with fully ducted radiators and showed that substantial recovery was possible.

Aircraft radiators had been generally treated like those in automobiles, using the speed of the airplane to force air through the radiators (ram air) and dissipating the heated air at random. The ram air pressure is proportional to the square of the speed (V 2), but only directly proportional (1 to 1) for changes in density of the air with altitude. This is expressed as Pressures 1/2 pv* where p is air mass density [Bernoulli's classic equation for uncompressed flow]. Mass of an object, or a quantity of air, is intrinsic and does not change with gravity, but on earth its measure is in pounds or kilograms. So we divide weight by the acceleration of gravity (32.2 fps/s) to obtain mass which will be the same on the moon or in space as it is on earth. Using the weight of the air and the earth's gravity constant, p at sea level is 0.00237 mass units per cubic foot in English measure, and 0.00106 at 25,000 feet

Now airplane cooling has to be effective for various speeds and power settings, so the conventional radiator had to be able to cool an engine at full power in a climb at perhaps half its speed at full-power in level flight So an airplane climbing at full power at 150 mph would require about four times the radiator exposure area as the same plane at full power in level flight at twice the speed, 300 mph. This fixed radiator exposure, of course, led to an unnecessarily high drag at high speed and absorbed a great deal of the engine's power. It also had to cool on the ground—but only at idle or taxi speed power output.

Radiators constructed of tubing and metal fins considerably restrict airflow and so Meredith experimented with ducting the air to the radiator face and ducting it out to the airstream. By making the outlet variable, he could restrict the air passing through the radiator to just that amount needed for cooling. Pressure ahead of the radiator, PI, is determined by the speed and air density (altitude) and is approximately 1/2 p V s. By closing the outlet partially, the pressure behind the radiator. P2, is maintained to the level that permits just enough air to pass through for cooling purposes. It is also apparent that the intake opening can be much smaller than the radiator size and that the drag is much less.

In passing through the radiator, the air is heated and expands in volume. A 200° Fahrenheit temperature rise expands the air some 40%, so it can be seen that the discharged air— although having the same mass as the incoming air—has a larger volume and for a given pressure requires a larger discharge opening, providing some forward thrust This thrust is roughly the pressure behind the radiator, P2, times the area of the discharge opening. This, incidentally, is the principle of the ramjet engine with, of course, much higher temperatures.

With this insight from the Meredith report, I began to gradually think about some way it might be applied to the P-40. However, with a little more consideration I began to believe that, in spite of the extra plumbing and probable weight increase, the radiator should be in the fuselage with only the duct openings exposed. The P-40 had the cooling system forward under the rear of the engine, and to balance the plane property for stability, the pilot was rather far back— somewhat compromising his view and limiting fuselage space.

The idea of a re-design, or even a new design, looked attractive, but the thought of such a possibility seemed somewhat fanciful since I had never seen any government buy a production plane without a set of requirements in detail, some kind of competition and/or flight test approval and a formal appropriation of money.

In my position as vice president, I had responsibility for contract administration, among other things, and so had occasion to go to 15 Broad Street rather frequently to negotiate contracts, prices, spare parts, equipment, and support services. In January 1940, I told Dutch that I would like to try to get some kind of a fighter authorization and that I hoped my ideas on reduced cooling drag might be a vehicle. He was generally supportive, but skeptical, as I was myself. My best hope was perhaps a contract to modify a single P-40 or possibly to build an experimental airplane.

The British Purchasing Commission, in addition to Sir Henry, had as principal personnel Air Commodore Baker, Colonel William Cave, and H.C.B. (Tommy) Thomas. Thomas was a senior technical man, and I used some occasions to talk to him about the cooling drag subject, making the point that my confidence in the possibilities of a major improvement was based on the Farnborough papers as well as the natural technical logic of the application.

I made a point of visiting Tommy and also Bill Cave when I could, both on direct business and from Dayton and Washington, which I visited frequently. Coast-to-coast was just a long overnight trip then in DC-3s, and I could cover quite a bit of ground. I could see that my suggestion had been taken seriously after two or three visits, and I believe that Thomas established some communication with Farnborough on the subject. I used only some free-hand sketches, but Tommy was very astute and technically qualified. The questions about implementation got more concrete, but no company engineering work was started and it seemed a long shot. I had discussed my concept with Ed Schmued, preliminary design supervisor, who, though not technically educated, had a real talent for shapes and arrangements and mechanical components, but the first work authorization, denominated NA-73. was not issued until April 1940.

Finally, early in that month. I was invited into Sir Henry's office and was advised approximately as follows: That they had decided to accept our proposal; that I should prepare a letter contract for his signature; that it should provide for the purchase of 320 aircraft of our design; that it provide a schedule and a not-to-exceed price per airplane; that the British-supplied equipment, including engines, would be specified; and finally, that a definitive contract would be negotiated on the basis of this letter contract. Furthermore, he told me that since we had never produced a fighter airplane, he considered it very desirable that we have some P-40 data as a helpful guide. He specified the P-40 wind tunnel report and the flight test report. He suggested that I attempt to obtain these data. I told him I would immediately try to do so and took the night train to Buffalo, home of the Curtiss plant. Parenthetically, this was on April 10. 1940, the day Hitler seized Denmark and the Norwegian ports. I remember on that day Colonel Bill Cave told me that this was just one of a number of obvious moves.

In Buffalo, Burdette Wright general manager of the Curtiss Airplane Company, was reasonable enough, considering the competitive aspects. Colonel Ben Kelsey of the Air Corps is reported to have said that the Air Corps encouraged him to sell me the data. This I don't know, but it could have been the case. Later, Dutch Kindelberger quipped that we didn't even open the package, although I am sure that some of our technical staff did examine the reports. I gave Burdy a marker for $56,000 for the copies, went back to New York, and as soon as I could, presented the letter contract. After staff review. Sir Henry signed it. and I went to the LaGuardia Airport. Work Order NA-73 was issued shortly after.

Dutch Kindelberger put a lot of effort and talent into increasing the efficiency of airplane production. Even at high wartime rates of production, parts were made in batches, and it was most unusual to have a machine tool dedicated to making one part, or even to one operation. Many tools, especially for sheet metal parts, were "soft" tooling, using masonite, plywood, or low temperature casting materials rather than tool steel, and were much cheaper—if not as durable. However they were adequate for the purpose, were made very much more quickly, and were adaptable to the inevitable changes that came along. Dutch made many contributions to the cutting, forming, and stretch-forming techniques, but his greatest improvement came from rationalization of assembly and installation processes.

It was common practice to finish the structural elements, wing, fuselage, etc., and then begin installation of equipment—electrical, hydraulic, armament, instruments, and other items—in the nearly completed structure. In large airplanes, with plenty of access room, this worked reasonably well with few bottlenecks, but in smaller planes, such as fighters and trainers, the final assembly stage was crowded, hectic, and inefficient. Starting with the T-6 series, Dutch required that fuselage and wing structures remain open in sort of half-shell condition until all wiring, tubing, and permanent equipment installations were made and that they be inspected and tested before joining into complete structures. This naturally required that the engineering design provide for this construction process—so it became part of house practice in all models.

During the war, the War Production Board kept production statistics and the principal comparative parameter was labor hours per pound of air- frame (airplane less engines and equipment). North American's record was consistently about 20% below industry averages. Noting this. Jake Swirbul, production chief for Grumman, came out to Inglewood during the war and spent a couple of days looking at the process. On departing, he visited Dutch and made approximately this remark: "Dutch, I don't believe you have better people or machinery or buildings or production control than we do, but how in hell do you get your engineers to design a plane so that the workers can get to the work?" The final 5,000 P-51 airplanes were built for 4/10ths of an hour per pound and sold for $17,000 each, less government furnished equipment: engine, armament, etc.

In 1940, the science of aerodynamics was largely empirical and much depended on actual tests. Even today, this is true to some extent as far as some fine points are concerned, and wind tunnels are still used . The Mustang first flew in October 1940, with an Allison engine, and soon some problems with the radiator ducting arose. The upper edge of the intake duct had been made flush with the bottom surface of the wing, and we soon found that the air flowing along the surface In front of the duct became a turbulent irregular pattern as it entered the duct and caused an audible rumble and vibration which was unacceptable. Also, it was thought that the opening should be larger for cooling on the ground at low speed, so a fold-down front panel was provided to admit more air for ground operation. This leaked pressurized air and caused considerable drag.

Both these problems required that some re-design and refinement be made. Some very capable aerodynamics people worked very diligently on the problems, using round-the- clock wind tunnel duct models and flight test measurements to arrive at the optimum configuration of a fixed intake with rounded lip edges. Also, the intake was moved down some two or three inches to provide a gutter or scupper for the thin layer of turbulent air to bypass the intake. This has been common practice for such ducts ever since.

The Mustangs went to England and began to participate in reconnaissance and low-level rhubarb sorties over enemy territory, although they were not considered for high-altitude combat because of the single stage supercharging. However, the RAF began to note that the Mustangs were faster than the Spitfires at the same altitude, and interest was increased. The Rolls factory actually installed a two-stage Merlin in a Mustang on an experimental basis, first flown in October. 1942. Also, the Army Air Corps had put the Mustang into production as an attack plane, the A-36, which saw service In North Africa, Sicily, and Italy.

The crucial part of the air war was clearly shaping up as an air superiority battle over Germany and occupied Europe, and our bomber losses were becoming unsupportable. Unescorted daylight formations were badly cut up and it was becoming clear that formation flying with machine-gun turret protection might be losing rather than gaining in this contest, as the Luftwaffe had in 1940 over England.

At about that point. I became aware that Rolls-Royce Merlin production had been established in the United States. Packard Motor Car Company was selected and its chief engineer was none other than Colonel Jesse Vincent, who had designed the Liberty engine of World War I fame. Colonel John

Sessums called me from the Pentagon one day In late May, 1942. His message was terse and electrifying: We are sending you a pair of Series 61 Rolls V-1650 engines and we want you to install them in a couple of P-51s. North American engineers worked at top speed to make the structural, aerodynamic, and cooling adaptations—and in November one was in the air. Excitement was high when the speed results came in—over 440 mph, or Mach 0.65, at about 25,000 feet. A considerable portion of the potential of the Meredith Effect was being realized as advertised in April, 1940.

Soon American-made Merlins were flowing, and the P-51s so equipped were deployed on airfields in England in 1943. Although their range was more than that of the Spitfire, it was still inadequate for effective bomber protection to most of the key targets, and the need for "longer legs" was acute. Responding in a way that left flight test stability engineers aghast, Raymond Rice and his team designed an 85-gallon puncture-sealing fuel tank to fit behind the pilot's seat and in front of the ducted radiator. This tank, weighing some 600 pounds when full of fuel, moved the center of gravity of the plane backward several inches and made it longitudinally unstable, meaning that it would not fly hands off, and when it started a dive or climb, it would either pitch up or dive out of control if not corrected continuously by the pilot. This was, of course, outside of any reasonable specifications, but with a skilled and alert pilot, it was manageable at least, until some of the fuel was used up.

Colonel Mark Bradley was strongly sponsoring this change, and in his assessment for General Arnold and General Spaatz, he took a fully loaded P-51 with wing-drop tanks and 85 gallon fuselage tank and flew a trial mission equal to a London-to-Berlin round trip, engaging in a 20-minute full-power simulated combat at maximum distance out and returned. He dropped the wing tanks first, then used the fuselage fuel and finally the internal wing tank supply. The high command accepted this test and the tanks started to go to England.

Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Hitchcock was air attache in London and was pushing hard for the long-range P-51. He was over 45, a member of a prominent New York family, an athlete, pilot, and reserve officer. He eagerly took a long-range P-51 for a test flight, and in pulling out of a high-speed dive, the plane failed and he was killed. I was not there, of course, and do not know exactly what happened, but it would not be surprising that the stick force reversed and it came back in his lap, overstressing the airplane at high speed. If he had kept under some three times the indicated stalling speed, the wing loads would have been within a 9G limit and well within the wings' strength capability. However, that was not his way—he apparently wanted to do what the combat pilots would have to do. However, with some practice, the Air Corps pilots successfully flew and fought these long-range planes. The appearance of the little friends was a welcome sight for the battered bomber crews.

One of the most important activities in the production of the P-51s was a major coordinated effort to make changes and improvements on a continuous basis—both on the production line and in the field—with kits of parts and technical orders to operating units. We fielded a large group of qualified technicians who assisted the engineering and maintenance officers and reported back on problems, deficiencies, and recommendations. Also, Colonel Ben Kelsey was very effective in implementing improvements. He would visit combat wings, sometimes flying combat missions, and monitoring problems. He would then make a circuit of Dayton, Inglewood, and Washington—both recommending and authorizing changes and improvements.

This kind of activity was not well understood by some higher-ups, and I had an interesting experience. The chief of the Aircraft Production Board at one point was Charles E. Wilson ("Electric Charlie"), who had been chief officer of the General Electric Company. Mr. Wilson was making the rounds of industrial companies, generally stressing the importance of war production and looking for ways to improve it. After touring the Inglewood plant, he gave a bit of a speech to a group in a conference room, consisting of some 50 or 60 of our leading engineers and production supervisors. He was talking production, production to the limit, and when he finally paused, I spoke up and said something like this: "Mr. Wilson, if we just produce all we possibly can, we are not doing our best for the war effort." He seemed surprised and almost affronted and asked what I could possibly mean. I tried to explain that we had a large backlog of changes that would improve the safety and effectiveness of the planes and that we must take some time to fit them in. He didn't say much more, but that evening, he spoke in downtown Los Angeles to a civic industrial group, and I had the satisfaction of hearing him say that in all the need for production, we must do all we can to make improvements in efficiency and serviceability as we go along.

One might ask where is the Meredith Effect today? It is alive and well and was applied on radial engines in the form of cowl flaps, but in modern jets, there is little requirement for direct cooling of fluids or air in the 200* F temperature range. Jet engine bleed air is hot and high pressure, so for cooling purposes, some heat is extracted by ducted heat exchangers in the Meredith manner, and the high pressure air is then rapidly expanded. The snowflakes sometimes seen in the jet passenger cabin ventilators are a result of expansion cooling, the reverse of compression heating.

To summarize, the Mustang cooling system provided just enough, but no excess of cooling air. Ideally, the back pressure P2 should be a minimum, close to zero, in a low-speed, high-power climb and a maximum at high speed and in long-range cruise, resulting in the lowest net drag where it is most needed.

An objective assessment of the Mustang is probably unavailable or inconclusive. During the war, the Collier Trophy Committee, certainly no military authority, passed over the Mustang repeatedly. The Congress, no center of airplane technology, in postwar assessment, declared the plane to be the most "aerodynamically perfect" plane of the war. Perhaps we should simply say that it was just one facet of the effort of millions of people doing their best for the war effort with varying degrees of capability and effectiveness. After all, the front line personnel deserved the honor in war. In recent years, there has been much introspection and analysis of the U.S. manufacturing establishment, and much has been written about product quality, employee participation, more choice for customers, quick change of models, rapid correction of deficiencies, flexibility in tooling and methods, and costs in general. I have seen many notable and almost heroic efforts in engineering and production and great efforts at product improvement In the Apollo lunar program, I have seen responsible people work to an almost unbelievable degree to make some very difficult goals. However, while war production was a massive struggle against shortages of every description, I doubt that I shall ever see again such a degree of product improvement, employee participation, relative product value, economic production, and generally superior results as I experienced in Dutch Kindelberger's airplane production complex during the period of 1939-1945.

webmaster note: the Military Channel in it's top ten fighters ever, selected the P-51 No. 1 based on the criteria for it's channel competition. That's all fighters, ever.

Comparisons to Other Fighter Aircraft of the Day (under construction)
The following observations by Charles Dills
27th Fighter Bomber Group

P-47

The P-47D was not a combat airplane. And neither was any Navy fighter!

To explain, I flew the A-36A for 39 missions. It was a P-51A w/divebrakes. It had an 12 cyl Allison engine. I don't remember the numbers for it but I do know the numbers of the P-51D which I flew later in Louisiana. It would cruise at 290 ind (395 corr) at 10,000' and 255 ind (380 corr) (at 25,000) [2%/1000']. At 10,000 the P-40 cruised at 220 (264 corr) and the P-47D at 245 ind (294 corr).

The fuel consumption of a P-51D25 (w/ Packard built Rolls Royce Merlin, 1503 HP) at cruise was 70 gph. At high power, combat settings it rose to about 90gph. A P-47D (much heavier plane) the cruise consumption was an acceptable 120 gph. But at combat settings the RATE of consumption would rise to 370 gph (from the tech orders, Part 4 Pilot Operating Instructions). This was because the cylinder fins were not adequate to cool the engine and instead it was cooled by dumping extra gas into the cylinder to go out the stacks unburned but carrying heat with it (Heat of Evaporation). This meant that if one were in a dust-up that lasted five minutes longer than planned, the reserve fuel would be exhausted and the plane would not make it back to the base. I know as sure as I'm writing this that there are many Navy pilots sitting in the bottom of the Pacific (and elsewhere) that never made it back to the carrier. I will never forgive the Navy brass that distrusted the coolant engines enough to kill thousands of their own pilots. We had one mission in Italy where none of the eight P-47's made it back to base. We were close to the lines but a number of them made it to other airfields and several bellied in on our side of the lines. I have between 600 and 800 hours in a P-40 (E, F, K, L, M and N models) and never had a problem with coolant. (I did abort one mission in Italy in an A-36A because of a pinhole leak that fogged the canopy!)

And secondly, they capped the peacetime wonderful engine with a peacetime wonderful Hamilton Standard oil operated propellor. The oil was in the spinner and any penetration of the spinner by metal, gravel etc would cause a loss of oil, the blades would go flat and you wouldn't go far in a gliding brick! One of our pilots had that happen up around Pisa. He stayed with it till he got down to the clouds, around 4500', and then he stepped out and walked back. You didn't go into clouds in Italy, too many big rocks (mountains). The Allison engine had a Curtiss Electric combat propellor. The motor was in the spinner but if it got damaged, automatic locks fixed the propellor in its last position and you could at least fly it home. One of our pilots took a hit on the spinner of a P-40 that blew the motor off. He was able to fly it back to base.

And thirdly, maneuverability of the P-47 at low altitude was bad, We did a lot of very low altitude straffing. The A-36A could be flown at 200' and when you saw a target, you could dip the nose, give a short burst and recover with minimum loss of altitude. The first week we had eight P-47's return with grape vines, fences etc because their planes almost mushed into the ground. We had to abandon that kind of straffing and strafe from 7-8000 feet., look for a target and then dive, fully visible to the enemy and shoot, remembering to leave plenty of room to pull out. The P-40 and A-36A could both be flown under 300', then dip the nose and strafe. The A-36A tech orders said (if I remember correctly) that 5% flap could be used at 350 mph and 10% at 300 mph. This would tip the nose down just a trifle but would minimize the loss of altitude. I'm not sure anyone ever did it but it was possible.

And fourthly, the P-47 could never be used in a true dive bombing run. We didn't dare. We probably never exceeded a 60 degree dive. But with both the A-36A and the P-40 we could approach the target at 15000', extend the divebrakes (A-36A) fly upside down till vertically over the target and then pull straight down and drop the bombs from 4000 to 6000 feet and pull out. Vertical bombing is far more accurate. Glide bombing is not!

Fifth, the P-47 could take a lot more punishment. But then again, you had to fly it in a way that it got more punishment. The A-36A and the P-40 both at 300' was on target and gone in seconds, they did not have time to react and shoot back. Furthermore, the A-36A's divebrakes had slots that created an eery whistling whine that seemed to come from everywhere. It would unnerve the gunners and then we were there and gone before they could do anything. The Germans were said to call us "the Screaming Devils". one German surrendered (we were told) because he was so unnerved when we attacked from directly above and his friend was killed and he never even saw us, just heard us. The A-36/P-51 had an almost invisible frontal view, particularly when coming down vertically!.

Sixth, maneuverability! The P-47 probably could out-turn a Navy cruiser but neither a P-40 or any P-51. Look on my page. After combat, my last station was at Alexandria AAB. We flew P-40's and "attacked" B-17s so the crews could get camera gunnery training. It was probably the most fun duty in the Army Air Force. Then we got brand new shiny P-51D25's. Mine had 7h 28m flight time from Inglewood.We continued to do "attack" duty. Then we got some TDY (temporary duty) at Ardmore OK to do the same with their B-17 crews. One day nothing was happening and two of our pilots took off, just to fly! After they were gone, I got the itch so I took off to look for them. Finally I saw two shiny airplanes at some distance. I got higher and up-sun and then made a pass at them. I was closing awfully fast and I passed them with the throttle back at idle and as I passed I saw the were P-47's. I was going to off and look for my friends when the P-47's made a half hearted break toward me. Aha! So I engaged them. I probably could have shot them both down in a minute. Admittedly I was probably a great deal more experienced than they were. So it got boring and we leveled out and I tried to join formation on the right. Cruise in a P-51 was 38-42 inches Hg and 2450 rpm. I had to throttle back to 28 inches and put down some flap to slow down to stay in formation. I was surprised. But I got a little worried. The P-51 has very sensitive spark plugs. Two very small platinum plated electrodes that could foul easily if run under idle to low power for a more extended period. And if they fouled, you might have to walk home. So I decided to quit the formation. But I wanted it to show the contrast so I moved out to the right. I put the RPM up to 3000, pulled up the flaps and pushed it tohj 61 inches Hg. I leapt out in front. I let it roll for a minute or so and then pulled up into an Immelmann out of straight and level flight. I passed over them in the other direction, 1500 feet above them.

I don't think I knew how great the contrast was. I once looped a P-51 out of a climb. I was going at 210 mph, 2600 Rpm and 46 inches Hg and I just pulled back on the stick and went over the top in a smooth beautiful loop. I was down to probably 70 mph at the top but if the ball is in the center, no problem. I did feel the torque try to twist it at the top but I corrected. Yes, it was a bit stupid but the Mustang is so beautiful to fly.
I went down to Orlando in 1990 and flew in Crazy Horse! The pilot knew why I was there. I wasn't there for instruction. I wanted to see if I had any of IT left. He took off and when he got 500' in the air he said, "It's all yours!". I did not fly straight and level, ever. Back and forth, back and forth and then I did a barrel roll. More back and forth, getting the kinks out of my shoulders, and then another barrel roll. More back and forth and then a loop. He gave me the speeds which were far higher than necessary and so I cast a wide loop and repeated the other loop I just referred to. I just flew it in a wide and high loop and again felt the torque at the top. it was wonderful. Then some grass cutting and a low pass at Kissimmee and then back to Orlando. He told me the speeds and I made a beautiful landing, got it under control, and he told me to go around. I made a second beautiful landing to show that the first one wasn't an accident. It was marvelous. It was great to find out that after 45 years I could still do it! After he parked it and got out he said, "You have a nice feel for where the ground is!" I suspect he didn't know what a compliment I thought that was. I think you can detect my enthusiasm even fifteen years after!

I can understand why a Jug pilot would treasure the memory. It probably was the only plane of this class that he flew. It took him on umpty ump missions and brought him back. There were many of them, only a few A-36's. They had nothing to compare it to. Of course, it would seem like the greatest plane in the world. But after a P-51, nothing else will do. There are one or two of most WWII planes still flying. When did a P-47 win an air race? How many are still flying? How many P-51's are still flying. Over 200 I believe. I believe some of them have even been built from scratch!!! What other WWII plane was brought back in the Korean War?

What greater compliment can there be. I pity any WWII fighter pilot that never got a chance to fly the greatest propellor driven aircraft ever built.