Posted on 12/01/2016 11:19:51 AM PST by C19fan
The benefits the P-51 Mustang brought to aerial battles in World War II, particularly over Germany, are reasonably well known. The iconic fighter plane could fly higher, faster, farther and generate more kills per sortie than the U.S. Army Air Force’s aviation bureaucracy’s preferred P-47s or P-38s. However, the real P-51 Mustang story is just as much about the difficult gestation of a great new fighter as it is about the quashing of the drop tanks urgently needed to extend the range of existing fighters. Then there’s the guerilla tactics some officials unleashed in the corridors of power to overcome the Army’s “not invented here” hostility to the plane, as well as the mendacious post-war rewriting of history by the newly minted U.S. Air Force.
(Excerpt) Read more at warisboring.com ...
I don’t care how it came to be, the P51 Mustang is one of the best single-engine propeller driven aircraft in history.
And the only prop-driven fighter I can think of that looks better is the Supermarine Spitfire.
(In my opinion)
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Glad you said “in my opinion.”
In MY Opinion it is the other way around. The P51 has always been my absolute favorite of all planes that ever flew. Used to build models of them when I was a kid. I still go to airshows just to see them perform and to talk to their pilots. It is the sexiest plane ever designed. The Spitfire is second.
Sure, but it wasn’t the first plane to get an engine swap after development. It was pretty common at the time.
The Rolls-Royce Merlin engine transformed the P51 from an average fighter to the best fighter in the European theater. A good friend of mine flew them in WW11 and he shared many amazing stories.
Kindelberger ran this idea by his brilliant young chief designer Ed Schmued, a naturalized citizen born in Germany. Schmued immediately replied he could design a much better airplane in three months. Many years later, one of the authors asked Schmued in interview if he had ever designed a fighter before.
“No, but I had been carrying around in my head concepts of what I would do if ever given the chance,” Schmued replied. “The design that became the P-51 is the result.”
#8.
Just watched a documentary on youtube about Wittman. Yesterday, as a matter of fact. Had never heard of the Firefly until then.
To me, the Spitfire doesn’t just look the best, it sounds the best (but as a Brit I admit I could be a little bit biased)!
Göring is alleged to have said that the day an [Allied] fighter reaches Berlin, the war [for Germany] is lost. And that honour most definitely goes to the Mustang.
Beast!
Tiger go boom
Pity the generals couldn’t figure out the value of high velocity tank guns and sloped armor, either.
As someone said earlier, a British engineer noted the Rolls-Royce Merlin 61 was almost identical in size to the V-1710. As such, the British decided to put the Merlin 61 into a slightly modified P-51A airframe (the Mustang X) and the British test pilots were shocked it gained 10,000 feet in maximum altitude and the top speed went from 387 to 432 mph! The results were so impressive that North American decided to build a P-51 version designed around the Packard-built version of the Merlin 61, and the resulting plane had a top speed of 441 mph when tested in late 1942! (In late 1942, the P-51B prototype at 441 mph was easily the fastest fighter in the world, no contest.)
When I was a kid in upstate New York, the owner of a local sporting goods store somehow acquired a non-flying P-51 and parked it outside the shop. I used to climb up on the wing, put my head against the canopy and stare down the long, mean nose of that beautiful thing. I just knew that the view from a Mustang cockpit was the most badass thing a guy could see.
So what, specifically, made the Merlin engine so superior to the Allison? Horsepower is made by superior breathing/compression so, obviously, the Merlin had bigger intake/exhaust ports/valves, but did it have more exotic (for the time) refinements i.e. multi valves, DOHC (chain driven or belt), mechanical fuel injection vs water injected carbs or exotic materials like newer aluminum alloys vs magnesium? But having achieved superior performance in piston driven aircraft the push for additional performance gains died with the advent of jet power by the Germans.
“Pity the generals couldn’t figure out the value of high velocity tank guns and sloped armor, either.”
Seventy years later, they still make tanks with flat plate armor.
I am guessing that if the idea did not originate with Hap Arnold then it was not considered.
The BIG giant difference was undoubtedly the supercharger, which was a 2-speed, 2 stage intercooled supercharger. The Allison engine was supercharged with a less capable single-stage SC that did not do altitude well, specifically, the altitude bombers flew at...so the engine swap also worked well into that role for the P-51. Horsepower went from about 1200 to a bit over 1600 changing to the Merlin. That ain’t chopped liver.
A few other improvements aka tweaks came in the form of routing exhaust gases so they provided a bit of thrust and a slight wing adjustment in later versions. The Merlin used 100 octane fuel to advantage as well. But the overwhelming big deal was the engine swap.
Reading the linked history, it’s quite amazing how resistance from the brass kept what was a champion plane from its ultimate place of glory. And in multiple instances. I mean, how smart do you have to be to think that bombers maybe ought to have escorts? And that the fighters doing the escorting maybe ought to have drop tanks so they can range with the bombers. And if they are fighting, then worrying about the loss of bombload is kind of the wrong thing to worry about. Another illustration of the power of “experts”, huh?
When Curtis LeMay directed the bombing of Japan he ditched the daytime high altitude bombing because of the losses and they weren't hitting very much. He basically adopted the British pattern of lower altitude night bombing with incendiaries, which did a heck of a lot of damage.
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