Posted on 02/03/2016 10:11:18 AM PST by UNGN
The pilot of a World War II-era P-51C Mustang is OK after making an emergency belly landing at Dallas Executive Airport Wednesday morning.
Dallas-Fire Rescue confirms the plane landed at about 10:30 a.m. with its gears retracted. The fighter plane's prop detached as it left the runway and came to rest in a grassy area off a taxiway.
The plane is a single-seat aircraft with room only for a pilot. No injuries were reported, though the vintage aircraft suffered extensive damage, officials said.
Lynn Lunsford, with the Federal Aviation Administration, said the aircraft belongs to a local flying museum. FAA records indicate the aircraft was built in 1942 and that the owner is the American Air Power Heritage Flying Museum.
(Excerpt) Read more at nbcdfw.com ...
It was a good landing!
In 1944, they would have simply replaced it with another. It wasn’t worth the effort to do such repairs on vehicles late in the war when there were more than enough.
Prop hub failure... wonder if there's GoPro video from the inside (lots of warbirds carry cameras now).
It's one thing driving vintage cars where you coast to the curb after "tired iron" gives up. These airplane guys are more adventurous.
thanks for the clarification. I was thinking “D” when I said they arent horribly rare, but was not aware that B and C were that scarce.
I have read also that gunners had difficulty telling the difference between 109 and early mustangs...likely because of a quick glance at the canopy.
always glad to chat with fellow airplane junkies. I encounter them fairly regularly. we seem to be less horribly rare than one would think :)
horrido
For those not familiar with Dallas, a Tuskegee airplane should feel right at home at the former Redbird airport. Of course, there is some risk of it being stripped and the parts sold to the scrapyard before they can get it trucked back up to Addison.
Mustang = North American
(North American -> Rockwell -> Boeing)
P-51 started out as A-36 (Attack); early British request for a fighter to supplant Spits and Hurricanes removed dive brakes, revised the guns, and upgraded the low altitude Allison engines (with a marginally better Allison), did it so well that the US kept most of them, licensed the Merlin engine, and Commonwealth got a bunch of P-40s.
I believe they are referred to as ‘razorbacks’. Don’t see many of them.
Yep - and Dallas Executive is CAF’s new home base.
But it wasn’t a great one.
He did nothing slow. Grandpa wouldn't get in the car with him.
He gave me a ride home once.....just once. He drove a great big Cadillac. We hit 60 before we even got out of the golf course parking lot and did well over 100 (speed limit 35-40 on twisty country roads) all the way to my grandparent's house. A bit nerve-wracking, to say the least.
Fun guy, though. Gorgeous wife, six kids, and a whole passel of grandkids. I knew him for a long time, and he never once asked me what I did for a living. "His friend's #1 Grandson", was my vocation. :-)
Great story. Thanks for sharing that.
My Dad’s WW II friends were like that, as I remember. I know my Dad was. They were all real men.
That sounds like a poor decision on someone’s part.
In truth, none of Grandpa's friends ever asked me about what I did for a living. It's not that that they weren't interested or didn't care, it's that being his grandson was far, far more important.
Good lesson in priorities, there, I think.
Good lesson in priorities, there, I think.
—
True enough.
I do wish that the Addison airport had enough space for them, what with the Cavanaugh Flight Museum already there. The B-29 was attached to that museum for a few years (the museum helped to pay for FiFi's new engines).
The old Braniff facility at Love would have been a good choice, but the White Citizens Council probably wouldn’t want those noisy propeller planes near the Bubble.
Then there is the old NAS Dallas - it’s underutilized at the moment (used to quarantine dogs exposed to Ebola, I think, and a few other minor uses - Texas air guard, some small reserve components, and maybe some of what little is left of Vaught). Should be plenty of room there, and the taxpayers have probably fixed the vandalism done by the navy when they left.
Someone forgot to tighten the nut....
The Brits wanted more P-40s, but Curtis was at capacity. North American had idle plant, so the Brits asked if the could build P-40s under licence, North American said "We can do you better than that" and developed the P-51
Two years later, the USAAF asked NA to develop a ground attack version.
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