What’s the diff between a spitfire and a mustang?
Mustangs were American planes, Spitfires were British. Both were very good air superiority fighters used mostly against the German Messerschmitt, and underwent periodic upgrades. But give me a choice of which plane I’d rather fly, and it’s the Mustang P-51D hands down.
Day and night.
“What’s the diff between a spitfire and a mustang?”
Both used the same basic engine design and were taildraggers. The’s about it for similarities.
The Mustang was designed by North American and almost “on the shelf” as factory model NA-73, when the British Purchasing Commission approached them with a proposal to build Curtiss P-40s. Someone suggested an update of the NA-73, using later versions of the Rolls-Royce V12 Merlin engine; till then, the 73 had shown lackluster performance with its originally installed Allison V1710 engine. USAAF had investigated its potential as a ground-attack machine (A-36) but remained unimpressed.
The British suggested installation of the Merlin engine in the P-51; with the use of higher octane avgas, and different turbochargers, performance potential was greatly improved.
As built in series production, the P-51 (USAAF official nomenclature for the Mustang) used an advanced airfoil shape exploiting the latest findings from laminar-flow research: this gave it a top speed about 70 mph faster than early Spitfires, and some three times the range.
P-51s carried heavier armament: first four, later six 50 cal AN/M2 machine guns firing at the rate of some 1100 rds/min each. Spitfires of early WWII were armed with eight British-made Browning guns in 303 British caliber. Theoretically, the 50 cal outranged the 303, but in action, engagement ranges were not much different, as human ability to hit a moving target from a moving platform in aerial combat proved the limiting factor. Those were the days before lead-computing gunsights or fire-control computers.
The Spitfire earned a huge reputation from all who flew it, and remained a favorite, becoming the only British fighter produced throughout the war, and the most-produced Allied fighter, period. It received upgrades many times in many ways, including much heavier armament, to include 20mm cannon.
Designed less that six years after the Spitfire, the P-51 outperformed it in many respects, but was a tricky aircraft to fly: more were lost to landing mishaps than to hostile fire. Its small airframe could hold only a small ammunition reserve: 12-14 seconds continuous fire. It succeeded in the ETO only because extreme modifications were undertaken, adding extra internal fuel tanks which put the center of gravity outside safe limits (causing fatal loss of control to the unwary), and by using drop tanks. Even so, it just barely had sufficient range to accompany USAAF bombers to their max-range targets.
Once B-29 operations began in earnest against Japan, the P-51 was completely outclassed, incapable of escorting the big bombers to the Home Islands from the bases then held. Only after Iwo Jima and Okinawa were taken could any USAAF fighters join the fight. Fortunately for US bomber crews, Japanese air defenses were neither as intense nor as organized as those over Nazi Germany.
All landings in taildragger aircraft demand the utmost attention from the pilot.