The story of P-51 Mustang 1 of 6

The story took its beginning when Britain had trouble finding suitable use for their P-40s which were inadequate for the european airwar. With the upcoming "Lend an lease"-law the british hoped to take advantage of USAs enormous production capacity and in April 1940 they contacted their earlier supplyer of aircraft, North American Aviation, and presented the specifications for a new fighter.

NAA were well informed of the needs to a fighter for the european arena and promised to produce an even better fighter than specified by the british. 1 months later the british placed an order of 320 stk of the new fighter, but the prototype had to be finished within 3 months, so big were their needs!

117 days later the first prototype, NA-73, rolled out of the assembling hall however without a motor and with weels borrowed from AT-6 Harvard!

Six weeks later the prototype flew without complications. Britain placed a initial order of 300 fighters which they gave the name Mustang. The Mustang had a new profiled wing with less drag than the conventional wing and a very clever cooler/exaust port which too reduced the drag.

Although fitted with an Allison V-1710-39 1100 hp-engine the fighter had very fine performance in low and low/medium heights, except its climbing capabilities were poor. Nevertheless the british orders climbed to almost 1000 examples.

In USA there initially were very limited interest for NAAs fighter and only willingness to accept two free examples under the designation XP-51. Later was eventually placed an order for 150 examples of P-51 named Apache.

In Britain many experiments with the Mustang took place and a quantum-leap in the performance of the Mustang came, when they in the fall 1942 mixed what they saw as the hitherto best fighter design, the Mustang, with the best fighter engine, the Rolls-Royce Merlin.
Four fighters were equipped with Merlin 61 and 65 engines and four-bladed propellers to manage the extra power, and then the testing went on.

When North American received the test data, the way immediately lay open for the mass production of the Mustang as everyone know it . . . . . WW2s best longrange escortfighter, which took the pants of the germans! (the videos sadly enough skips most of these details).

Carl Vendler