Yeah, the legend says that the first drawing of the Mustang/A-36 was sketched on a restaurant napkin and from that sketched it was developed in just over 100 days :cool:

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So while the airframe was amazing, it didn't become a plane to be reckoned with until they put the Merlin under the hood. What we know as the Mustang was really a joint development between the Americans and Brits.

The P-40 is not actually a bad turner itself, it just lacked the high altitude performance. The P-51 was an energy fighter that could go pretty much everywhere and mix up with the best that the Germans and Japanese had.
It was quite delicate compared to the rugged P-47, but it could outperform it pretty much everywhere (except maybe for diving?).
Regarding the ruggedness, I always wondered why the Americans insisted on using the F-51 in Korea when they could have delivered a better payload on a more robust plane with the P-47.. the development of the Skyrider should be quite significant on this aspect..

I agree Splitter, the feeling of speed, stability and readiness is incredible.. no sloppiness, delay, slow reactions.. just 1650HP of energy packed in the 10ft between you and the propeller! :cool:

Are Mustang rides really that expensive now?! Jeeez! That would cost me quite a lot of money! ;)
Who did you fly with, the Crazy Horse guys?

SJ

And Romanator21 has just pointed out a major flaw in the B/C models. The early razor backed P 51s were the fastest versions to fly in combat. Typically about 20mph faster than a bubble top D model.

Also much is said about how much better the Merlin engine Mustangs are, because of their performance at altitude. It should be noted that the Mustang 1s that saw service with the RAF were the fastest aircraft in Europe below 15,000 ft. when they were put in service. The Allison P51s were not dogs.

Actually Romanator doesn't quite have it right. The P-51D is faster at low altitudes but the P-51B/C are the fastest (except the Mustang Mark III in game) Mustang available and peak at a higher top speed at a higher altitude than the P-51D. All according to IL-2 Compare.

However, if you're down lower then the P-51D is the faster plane. As far as I know this does represent reality with a reasonable level of accuracy (the B/C were tuned in one way and the D recieved a different supercharger tuning).

[QUOTE=Sternjaeger;191649]Yeah, the legend says that the first drawing of the Mustang/A-36 was sketched on a restaurant napkin and from that sketched it was developed in just over 100 days :cool:

Yeah, the rides are that expensive now. I got a report from a friend that went to a hanger dance at the local airport recently. The plane he pictured was "Betty Jane" which looked like a B model to me. I really cannot be sure if that was the two seater offering rides at $2200 for 30 minutes, but I think it was.

You can also take rides in WWII bombers for something like $400 but I never have. Maybe some day.

I flew in a P-51 about 17 years ago in Kissime Florida. I think I actually paid by the pound! It cost me...$600? It's been a long time and it was a spur of the moment thing so I can't be sure. I have also taken a ride in a local (Winchester, WV) AT-6 Texan where I was allowed to take the stick....that was fun lol. We didn't do aerobatics in the P-51 but we did a lot in the AT-6. Totally different experience in the trainer with the big radial. We did a simulated dive bombing on a bridge in Harper's Ferry, Chandelles, and 8 point rolls plus some other fun stuff. That pilot liked to try to make "sim jockeys" queasy :).

I used to hang out at my local airport when I was a teen and gave rides or ran errands for private pilots who flew in. I got to ride in and sometimes got to "fly" some pretty cool planes. The best at the time was a two seat Pitts Special...that thing was scary nimble but I didn't get any "stick time". The amazing thing about that plane is that the pilot rolled us several times in one direction and my head was spinning...one quick roll in the other direction and I was perfectly fine.

Flying used to be fairly "cheap" and I was an idiot not to follow through with my license back then. If you saved a pilot $100 in rental car services he was more than happy to show off his bird for an hour or so.

I don't know why we chose to go with the 51 inline engine in Korea instead of a P-47. The big radial would have made much more sense in the ground attack role. It's interesting that the radial lasted all the way into Vietnam in the SkyRaider. Of course, the Cosair was used in Korea also so I guess they were using what they had on hand given that the US was not prepared for Korea (all that de-militarization that works so well....).

In WWII, there were some clear differences in air combat theory between different countries. The Japanese preferred lightly armored and very nimble aircraft. The Americans liked heavier, faster, more durable aircraft. Each country had their own preferences. I have always thought it made sense to be faster than the opponent so a pilot could break off a fight any time he wanted to...maybe that's just an American prejudice :).

The really bad argument is the age old Spit vs. Mustang debate. To me, they are planes made for different roles and each performed their role very well in their time. The 190 and 109 performed their roles well too. It's just that to me....the Mustang filled a number of roles well enough to make it unique amongst its' contemporaries. The Mustang could do a credible job in the Spit or 109/190 role, but it had the legs to fly from London to Berlin and back too.

We are VERY lucky in my area, BTW. Many air shows with vintage aircraft are within driving distance every year.

Splitter

Oh... about the Mustang in Korea. I'm over simplifying what happened but after the war the P-51's were put into mothballs for the most part while the P-47N's continued on in National Guard units. I think they were phased out sometime in the late 40s just before the US got involved in Korea. The Mustangs were cheap and still plentiful while the P-47s were phased out or scrapped.

The P-47 would have been a much better CAS aircraft but the Mustangs were available in quantity and they needed to procure large numbers of aircraft in a very short period of time.

That is as best I understand that particular situation.

Maybe - I don't ever use boost except in extreme situations, so I wouldn't know what performance it can attain under those settings. At low altitude, boost does nothing but cook the engine, so it's best to leave it off no matter what.

The reason why the Mustang doesn't shine in IL-2 is because 99% if the time it's being flown in turning dogfights down in the mud. No matter how good the P-51 was in reality, it just couldn't do what some pilots demand of it.

This is very true. It weighs 7,640 lbs empty, while Spit Mk.9 weighs 5610 lbs empty. The engines have the same output of 1690 Hp. Yet the Mustang can go 30 mph faster than the Spitfire.

This shows just how aerodynamically refined the Mustang is, but it should be abundantly clear that with its weight it cannot accelerate like the Spitfire, cannot climb like one, and cannot be subjected to the same maneuvers - it will lose all its speed and become a sitting duck if you try. It's not a "do anything" plane in this sense, but it doesn't matter. Strategically, it was enough. Be miserly with her airspeed, and the Pony will treat you well. :)

The Fw-190 is another design which has these features and is very clean aerodynamically. I don't think the P-51 was "a generation" ahead of this and similar planes.

I suggest everyone who believes the Mustang is badly porked in IL-2 to play CFS-1 and Aces High II like I have. You may be surprised to find that it shares many characteristics with the Il-2 one:

1) Fast but slow to accelerate to top speed
2) Can't climb quickly and maintain high speed
3) Can't turn sharply and maintain high speed
4) "Glass jaw" engine that can be stopped with small-caliber rounds.
5) .50 cals take time to do work on a target - effective at convergence - causes opponents to bleed out rather than blow up.
6) Very unpopular with the majority of players who prefer turning fights and has been subject to claims of porking, etc.

The FM issues with the Mustang are minor, relatively speaking, comparable to the quirks in the FM of other planes. It would be great if fixed, but I don't think it will turn it into an uber online dog-fighter just like that.

Looking forward to the pony in the installment of storm of war Korea. Twin mustang too

S!

Had the privilege to meet Günther Rall in an event arranged at Finnish Air force museum some years ago.As we all know he flew the Bf109 all his career and was pretty succesfull in it too shooting down some 275 aircraft, actually 276 as the P47D he damaged ditched later in France. But that is another story.

So of course we kept asking him politely about tactics and performances. As of best tactic against planes he said with a laugh: Shoot it down! Can imagine it as Rall was one of the marksmen in Luftwaffe, shooting down fighter planes from 400m which is really far for the time.

Ok, about the Mustang. We asked which plane he regarded the best of allied fighters. He said without hesitation: Mustang. His points were clear on the plane: speed, range, cockpit ergonomy, controls, visibility. He did not say it was a turn fighter or anything, but as a pilot he valued the characteristics above. B109 lacked some of that but he said he could fly it to the limits as he "had been living inside it for 5 years".

Combine that with pilots that have a full training behind and results are good. This is what happened in Europe as well. USAAF had the air supremacy and according to Rall there was not much they could do but sit and watch the P51's, P38's and P47's prowl the skies. The odds were too much and new young pilots died in their first or second flight.

Yes romanator, there are other planes that I should have included in the "next gen" of piston planes, like the fw-190 (which I think was way ahead of it's time), bearcat, tempest etc. Interesting to see a trend towards speed and larger size (except the bearcat).

That's pretty much it. My father was a subscriber to a quartertly aviation magazine that also runs some history columns and i've read pieces about both the Mustang and the Corsair in Korea.

What happened was that the types of prop-driven close support aircraft were chosen based on what was available or easiest to restore to flying condition in order to quickly close the gaps and start flying CAS sorties as soon as possible. It was a case of "i need an extra 1000 airframes and i need them yesterday", instead of "i need the best aiframes for the job".
This meant that Mustangs with their sensitive liquid cooled merlins had to run the gauntlet of low level AA and small arms fire.

It's also interesting that Corsairs suffered higher losses than what was expected of an aircraft with a radial engine. The reason was that Corsairs were stripped of certain equipment post-WWII to improve handling and performance. When the first ones were shipped to Korea there was no time to re-install everything, so a lot if not the majority of them entered combat while missing some pieces of equipment.

Among those missing pieces was an armoured ring running around the engine cowling. Radials are powerful, reliable, durable and all that jazz, but still need oil to work. Well, the main oil lines in the Corsairs were running around the cowling and the lack of the armoured cowling ring made them one of the most vulnerable parts of the airframe. A big WWII-era radial could still function with entire cylinders blown off as long as it had lubrication, but if there's no oil everything grinds to a halt through friction sooner or later.

In practical terms what his means is that as the Corsair is diving towards the target and going head-on through the flak, all it would take was a few bits of lucky shrapnel that might not even scratch the engine block, but they could certainly puncture the oil line and force a mission abort.