A P-51 Mustang Story You Won't Believe

the P-51 Mustang one of the fighters that undoubtedly won the Skies over Europe in World War II the only thing more important than this legendary aircraft the brave men who flew them in this video a P-47 and P-51 pilot who flew over 100 Missions over Europe walks us through his journey to become a fighter pilot and his first dogfight with a skilled German pilot that nearly cost him his life and then he pulled out and I was going like a bat out of hell I'm going straight down over Chile Germany I can see it today let's relive his story relive his missions and hopefully save history it is 1942 and after the United States recent entry into World War II many young men have jumped into action and volunteered to serve their country one of these Brave young men would be a New Jersey Boy by the name of Edward mcneff Ed joined the U.S Army Air Corps and like most the dream was clear he wanted to become a fighter pilot but this was only for the cream of the crop and not everyone would make it so Nashville was an intake Center to find out what we might be in qualified for and everybody nearly everybody wanted to be a fighter pilot and we went through a battery of tests to see what kind of reflexes we had and we had to put stylists in little holes and don't hit the edges and put round pegs and and round holes as quickly as we could and and then after all that and and learning how to be a military person we did a lot of physical training and eventually they put the sign put the list up on the bulletin board and it said What year what is what your next station is going to be and what year um plane is going to be and of course we all readily run over to the bulletin board and and look and see where we were going I was glad to see that I was going to be a fighter pilot as 1943 went by Ed was sent to Flight Training before he could be sent into combat he had to learn to fly the premier Fighters that the U.S had to offer after advancing from the trainers the first of these military planes was the P-40 Warhawk he would eventually Master it but not before one close call and then I was sent to spencefield Georgia for Advanced Training where we flew the at-6 and the at6 headers retractable landing gear and uh we were moving on up and while we were there we got 10 hours in the p40. and that was an interesting experience in itself it's the first and only fighter airplane I ever put in a spin and I didn't do it intentionally it just fell off when we the first thing you do when you go to a new airplane is practice stalls and find out the stalling speed and then and maneuvering and how you control the airplane when you lose flying speed but that was successful in the whole thing turned out all right because I graduated from flying school in August of 1943. after moving on from the P40 he was tasked with flying the P-47 the most advanced fighter aircraft that the U.S had to offer when we first took off when you first walk up to a P-47 you say oh my God because you know you're coming out of you you've got 10 hours in a P40 which was like a a small airplane compared to a P-47 but the P-47 had that very very large radial engine in it so the airplane itself was big and we always used to say that an elephant is a mouse built by Republic Aviation because they make big airplanes fighter planes in January of 1944 after passing evaluations in the Thunderbolt Ed got news that it was time he was finally being sent over to England to join The 355th Fighter Group in the war against Germany this was a crucial time in the battle against Hitler as the Allies were doing everything possible to try and Destroy German defenses and production from the air thus Ed's arrival could not have come at a more crucial time here in early 1944 he would be flying the Thunderbolt the primary fighter aircraft of the Eighth Air Force the P-47 by now had proven to be a brilliant fighter it was an extremely effective ground attack aircraft and a formidable dogfighter as well but above all else it quickly became known for its ability to take a beating in combat but still get its Pilots home in these Thunderbolts the primary role of The 355th Fighter Group would be bomber escort this was a vital job in the war over Europe as the U.S Army Air Force had come to the quick realization that the b-24s and b-17s while outstanding planes simply could not get the job done on their own they would unquestionably need the aid and protection of Fighters originally when the B-17 was designed it was presented with a very unique concept that it was a bomber that did not need any fighter escort it was a plane that would be able to be its own escort completely able to defend itself because with eight guns all around the aircraft it was essentially an impenetrable Fortress a flying fortress if you will but as fighter technology developed over the coming years at an incredible rate it quickly became known that this was not the case that bombers no matter how heavily fortified simply could not operate without the aid of Fighters to help protect them fortunately American fighter pilots like the boys of the 355th would help solve this problem this is where Ed would fly but before he could see his first combat he had to become accustomed to his new home and Airfield we can see here from Ed's combat log that he took his first flight in early February of 1944 but these first few weeks of flight would be just local missions practicing formation flying over England coincidentally during this time the combat Pilots of the 355th that had arrived well before Ed were in the midst of their biggest actions so far the famous big week this Clash took place from February 20th to the 25th of 1944 and involved thousands of Allied aircraft taking on the might of the luftwaffe during these mini dog fights in February many of the men in the 355th scored their first aerial victories and there was plenty of fighting to go around but for the entire month mcneff along with the other new arrivals were still working on formation flying as they took local flights on March 2nd however he would get his first taste of action on this day he was assigned to an escort mission to the Frankfurt area and fortunately for him this would be a fairly normal Mission with no enemy aircraft cited and no trouble in their flight the next few missions would be mostly uneventful as well with the 355th encountering little more than scarce Flack on these missions as Ed tallied his first few combat missions in the P-47 he quickly began to fit right in with his unit and became a part of the Brotherhood that was the 355th but right as he was getting settled in a significant change would take place although their beloved p-47s provided much needed support for the bombers their ability to protect the fortresses and liberators had one clear limitation range originally the P-47 was the fighter escort for the U.S Army Air Force and it served this role very well it was able to keep up with the bombers it was able to stay with them for a decent amount of time but the biggest problem was that as the bombers moved their targets deeper and deeper into Germany the fighters could not stay with them as long as they needed and one of the very strategic and wise moves that the German luftwaffe did in World War II was that they realized exactly where the fighters had to pull off of the bomber formations and once they figured this out they would wait until exactly that moment that the p-47s or other escort aircraft had to peel away from the bombers head back to England and that is when the German Fighters would attack the moment that the bombers were left unescorted because of this after less than five combat missions in the Thunderbolt in early March of 1944 a new aircraft arrived at their Air Base in England the p-51b Mustang this brand new fighter was to be assigned to all of the 355th and it would solve the problem of range and more when I first got to the 355th we still had p-47s so my first uh sorties were flown in the P-47 and the problem with the P-47 was that he didn't have any legs it couldn't go any place and it could go maybe to Middle France and then it had to go home and then all of a sudden somebody found the P-51 and they realized they had the perfect airplane the Mustang was almost instantly loved by nearly all of the pilots that entered the cockpit it was faster more maneuverable and had a much longer range being water cooled it lacked the ruggedness of the P-47 but in a dogfight this was a trade-off that many Pilots were willing to make Ed remembers vividly about making this transition and how they had to learn this new aircraft that was an interesting experience in itself the P-47 was a truck kind of it was powerful enough once you got up to speed but it took a little while to get it up to speed and it kind of used up a lot of Runway to get off the ground and then we got the P-51 and uh we all had to go through the go out in the cockpit and sit in the cockpit and learn the switches and the knobs and everything and then somebody would come out and give you a blindfold cockpit check and you put a blindfold on and uh they'd ask you where is the landing gear where is the flat lever where is the radio and each time they'd asked you had to use your fingers and touch the item and if you could do that well then you were able to solo the P-51 it only had one cockpit so uh your day came when you go out and start it up and taxi out to the end of the runway and uh push the power forward and go and the biggest thing in airplanes like that when you put the full power on and the prop is rotating and if it's like that there's a counter force that turns the airplane that way it's called torque so you had to be careful of of how you put the flat power on and how you manipulated your feet because your feet were on the Rudders and and you're keeping the airplane straight down the runway with your rudders but compared to the t-47 the P-51 jumped off the Runway and you were Airborne practically before you knew it and that was the introduction to the best airplane that was built in that time upon being assigned to his new Mustang Ed was now a regular of the unit and had earned his own nose art opting to paint his P51 after his wife back home okay unbeknown to him it would be in this fighter that Ed would go face to face with the luftwaffe for the first time nearly ending his career as a fighter pilot this fateful Mission would take place on March 16th where he and the rest of the 355th were serving as fighter escort for a large raid to Augsburg Germany as the mission progressed they flew near the bombers and all was going well as they were approaching their target however for the first time in his tour a message went out over the radio that broke the silence Bandits one o'clock it was messerschmitt's up ahead headed right for them and as Ed was about to find out these were experienced in highly skilled German Pilots the German pilot that I met the first time I met a an me-109 we were in Squadron formation that's four ships four ships four ships four ships and we were at about 28 000 feet trying to get to 32 000 where there were eight or nine me 109s and you know at 30 at 28 and 29 000 feet you're not climbing all that fast in the P-51 but that didn't matter but this one guy he's up here a couple of thousand feet and he peels off and I'm going I'm going after him and I'm going down he's going down and I'm going down and I'm not gaining on him and all of a sudden he snap rolls it now what exactly is a snap roll this is a high level maneuver that is usually only executed by seasoned Pilots instead of just a simple roll the snap roll actually involves a quick stall of the aircraft by rapidly pointing the nose of the plane upwards before executing a roll this causes the plane to rapidly lose speed in seconds which in this dogfight was exactly what the German needed let me snap roll that me109 of course that bled a speed off and he snap rolled it the other way and then he pulled out and I was going like a bat out of hell I went straight down and added what we called compressibility have you heard of that okay I'm going straight down over Kiel Germany I can see it today and I can't move my fight my control stick and I can't move my Rudders because they're locked with pressure air pressure going straight down as Ed mcneff watched the German fighter fly past him he immediately realized that he was in trouble fortunately the Messerschmitt left the engagement seeing that the Mustang was plummeting straight down but now Ed was the one in a predicament currently in a nearly vertical dive at the Earth his plane had locked up on him falling at well over 500 miles an hour the controls of the Mustang were essentially Frozen and he was unable to exit the dive well we've been taught and instructed what to do when you enter this possibility and I I did it I didn't you don't use your trim tab to try to get it out you just keep a little pressure on the stick and hope that sooner or later you will and I did as I got down to around 8 000 feet from 28 000 feet I started coming out and there I was to practice I was alone I didn't know where any of anybody else was but you got to give that German pilot credit for knowing how to fly that airplane like that just before meeting the ground in Kiel Germany Ed was able to pull the nose back up avoiding a blackout or Worse structural failure that would take him right into a collision with the ground as we look at the first air-to-air combat that Ed mcneff experienced in World War II we can see that at this early point in 1944 the German Pilots were still very experienced and very formidable adversaries this particular 109 that Ed mcneff was pursuing pulled a maneuver that changed the table and really flipped the script in this particular dogfight Ed mcneff very quickly goes from a position of advantageous on the six o'clock of his enemy to now the enemy is behind him and if Ed mcneff had not been in such a fast and uncontrolled dive it is very possible that the German pilot would have remained on his six o'clock and potentially even shot him down after this close call in his first dogfight Ed was able to return to base but it taught him one thing that these German Pilots were indeed skilled and that he had to be on his toes to prevent another situation like this from occurring it was a learning experience and would provide valuable insight for later on however his Tour of Duty was just beginning in the coming weeks Ed mcneff would have his greatest trial yet facing a deadly situation with his wingman the loss of a beloved leader and more all of this will be in part two of Ed's Story coming soon in another video this story was only able to be told because one of you guys a viewer sent us an email and told us about Ed so if you know a veteran of the air War please send us an email here today don't wait so that we can hopefully tell their story and these trips are getting more and more expensive but we're going to continue to do it to save history so if you could help support us by checking us out at the patreon link below and making more stories like this one possible it would go a long ways and you can get great bonus content so please consider supporting and I'll see you next time

Channel: TJ3 History

Views: 454,438

Keywords: P51 Mustang, P51 Pilot, P-51 Mustang, P-51 vs 109, P51 Veteran, Mustang vs 109, WW2 Air Combat, Mustang WWII, P-51 Documentary, P51 Mustang Documentary, P-51 War Thunder, P-51 Dogfight, P51 Fighter, Messerschmitt Bf-109, Bf-109, IL-2 Sturmovik, IL2, Flight Sim, World War II Flight Sim, IL-2 Great Battles, IL2 Game, IL-2 Flight Sim, Combat Flight Sim, War Thunder, Realistic, History Channel Dogfights, Historic, Documentary, Mark Felton, Yarnhub, TJ3 Gaming, dark Skies

Id: w2xWt6SECnY

Length: 20min 15sec (1215 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 17 2023