P-51 Mustang Warbirds of World War II Series

fast and sleek looking every inch the Thoroughbred fighter it was the North American p-51 Mustang rose from obscurity to carve out a unique place in aviation history love by its planets feared by its enemies the Mustang possessed a rare blend of speed agility and range that made it an unbeatable air-to-air fighter pilots airplane real comfortable pilots airplane very honest no no bad habits no bad tendencies great performance lots of armament lots of gas lots of fuel it was it was a superior airplane in performance all around I think it was the airplane of the war on any side they were a beautiful airplane flight and I could sit there and me to all the switches and everything I didn't have to get a bunch of pillows ready I get move the seats up and fly and really was a easy airplane to fly I don't know how to describe it as I said they were very responsive you felt you could out fly anything it just was it was an easy plane to the take off the land it was very maneuverable you could break right or left almost with equal ease it had more power more maneuverability more speed more climb it it probably was better than anything the Germans had by 2% I was in a lot of dog fights where I was very happy with my 2% when the Mustang appeared in the skies over Europe United States Army Air Force pilots finally had the ability to carry the fight to Baloo father over Nazi Germany itself all those planes were very maneuver away the 109 and 1/9 we're good airplane the Germans head but then we got the the 51 sin which was a different story altogether and when you got into 51 and you think you're so god this damn thing ever quit son but that Merlin engine would run like an old model a Ford just rev forever now when the p-51 came along that changed the range gosh we can fly forever in a p-51 and I think my longest p-51 mission was a little over six hours p38 old four and a half hours would be about the longer them maybe four 45 so there are some targets that became available to us after we got the p-51 and while the German focke-wulf 190 and Messerschmitt 109 outclassed earlier American fighters the p-51 outperformed them both plane for plane nothing could beat a Mustang with a good man behind the stick I got behind the guy on a descending course and was gaining on him and I opened fire and I had a number hits on his wings and goose luck and he immediately broke hard up and again I was over running him so I had to go up and then back down but when I turned back down I found him coming up at me and I did not to this day figured out how he did that but I know that he got on my tail the 109 has a 20 millimeter cannon that fires right to the hub of the propeller and I went into a luck berry circle that's a tight a circle as you can turn and he was directly behind me so that my only view of him was to look straight back like this in my and every time I looked that 20 millimeter cannon was blinking and I've got nothing but a thin plexi glass cover over my head fortunately those shells were gone just behind my tail I made I think probably seventy-five to a hundred circle but whether it was the Mustang that much better than the 109 or whether I was that much better than him or a combination of both I was gaining on him he finally rolled over and headed straight down and I decided to let him get away and he got away and so did I I hit him he didn't hit me but we had a 10 minute individual battle though today the Mustang is considered to be one of the greatest American fighters ever built oddly enough it began its career as a reconnaissance aircraft flown not by the United States but by Britain's Royal Air Force it would take almost four years for the Mustang to evolve into a war winner for years that started with an odd request and an impossible deadline in the darkest days of World War two the British were looking to the US aircraft manufacturers to make air fighter aircraft for them they approached North American hoping they would build p-40 Warhawk s-- north american came back at them with a counter proposal they would design and build and fly a completely new aircraft within 100 days at the time in 1940 the British were utterly desperate for anything that could be a combat ready fighter so they were going all over the United States looking for anything that they could purchase when North American made their proposal the Brits actually snapped at the opportunity they just went for it because they needed aircraft quickly and North American was promising delivery of the prototype within a hundred days or so and they were promising an aircraft better than the p40 and they needed something better than the tomahawk and in fact North American did exactly what they promised in a hundred and seventeen days they had the prototype of the p-51 Mustang which was called the NA 73 constructed and within a hundred and thirty days that prototype flew for the first time the British initially ordered 600 of the p-51s and they're very enthusiastic about this aircraft however despite that enthusiasm by their British allies the American aviation authorities are really not interested in the p-51 at all until two years later the Royal airforce soon took delivery of about 600 of the new North American fighters which they dubbed the Mustang one British pilots soon discovered they had a terrific low-level aircraft on their hands with the top speed of almost 390 miles per hour on the deck the Mustang one was probably the fastest American fighter of its day light on the controls very agile and capable of climbing at over 3,000 feet a minute the Mustang looked like a real winner however the new plane did have its share of serious drawbacks the original mustangs came out with Ellison engines they were extremely good for low-level work and that's what the British used them for low-level fighter sleeps tactical recon they were unsuited for long-range escort work because the engine could not perform adequately at high altitude well the Mustang one did not have exceptional high-altitude performance the British still loved the aircraft because down low it was awesome it was fast it was quick it could get away from anything so they used it in a variety of roles mainly low altitude TAC recon and armed reconnaissance against ground targets but sooner or later they were bound to come in contact with the Luftwaffe and in August of 1942 the first Mustang kill of the war was scored and it's kind of an interesting incident because the fellow hauless Hills was a Royal Canadian Air Force pilot who happened to be an American flying an American aircraft in British service and he shot down a focke-wulf 190 so it was one of those incidents of the war that truly reflected the international character of the Allied war effort flying at treetop level and facing scores of light and medium flak batteries on every mission the brave Mustang pilots pressed on snapping photos of key installations and shooting up anything on the ground that moved while the British found the Mustang very useful in Western Europe at first the United States Army Air Force had little interest in the new fighter it took some time before the Americans could be won over by the glowing reports coming back from the RAF on the Mustangs combat record almost reluctantly the usaaf ordered a small number of Mustangs dubbed the p-51 a and sent them to observation and tactical reconnaissance squadrons unfortunately the Allisyn engine and its lack of a supercharger continued to limit the planes high-level performance in fact not lost upon the American pilots the very first p-51 for the a had an Allison engine and they were used for dive bombing and various things but they were they were not very impressive I flew in a few hours in a out of England just practicing we didn't have enough airplanes and so I flew we had a couple of aides on the field and I flew that practice some dive bombing because it was basically a dive bomber they didn't have the power and they were just not as responsive it had an Allison engine in it and it really couldn't keep up with much of anything as I said it was primarily a dive bomber in late 1942 North American utilizing some of the best features of the p-51 aid unveiled a new version of the Mustang designed as a single-seat dive bomber and called it the a36 Apache only a couple hundred 836 s were produced enough to equip a couple of fighter bomber groups and those fighter bomber groups ended up serving in the Mediterranean or in Burma the problem with the a36 was it couldn't carry a heavy load especially compared to the p-47 so it didn't last long in service it was also vulnerable to ground fire and in steep dives you had a tendency the pilots have a tendency to torque the tail section and and actually do structural damage and steep dives so was not particularly effective as a combat dive bomber but what it did do was deliver ordnance with pinpoint accuracy far above and beyond anything that the other fighter bombers the Army Air Force had at the time coming in at medium altitude the Apache squadrons would line up on their targets then wing over into steep dives opening their butterfly flaps as they went to slow their descent using their reflector gun sights to aim the pilots would wait until the very last possible moment to drop their bombs at about a thousand feet they would pull up and come off target such hair-raising dives took nerves of steel and excellent marksmanship but when done right no other Army Air Force aircraft could get its bombs on target with better accuracy and since it had derived from a fighter the a36 could fight its way out of trouble fact Apache pilots scored many air-to-air victories and at least one even became an ace while the e36 enjoyed limited success dive bombing never really gained acceptance in an Army Air Force dominated by strategic bombing advocates after serving for about a year the dive bomber groups were all are equipped and given fighters in the a36 the Mustang had reached an evolutionary dead end but just when it looked like it would barely be a footnote to the European air campaign a few inventive minds rescued North Americans design and gave it a new lease on life by mid-1943 the Mustang had seen combat as a reconnaissance aircraft a dive bomber and a ground attack fighter as a pure fighter however it seemed destined to be a failure but just as it appeared the Mustang would be relegated to minor roles in the air war a few men came up with a brilliant idea that would transform the p-51 into the most effective air superiority fighter history has ever seen there was a British pilot by the name of Harker who got the idea of taking a Mustang one airframe and mating it with a British Merlin engine and he proposed this to a US Air Force Army Air Force colonel by the name of Hitchcock who agreed that this might be a worthy thing to do so they went off and they got approval for this and they took a Merlin engine put it into a Mustang and discovered that they had a thoroughbred fighter with excellent AI altitude capability the Merlin was being produced in the United States at the time by Packard and so pretty soon the approval was given to produce the Mustang with the Packard built Merlin engine and that became the p51 be the first true strategic fighter of World War 2 the British engine that Packard built was extremely reliable great engine lots of power and altitude performance had a two-stage two-speed supercharger that let it get the ki altitude so it was the superior performer in every way with a top speed of almost 450 miles per hour at high altitude the Merlin powered Mustang now had the engine needed to carry the fight to the Luftwaffe as an air-to-air fighter British and German fighters generally had an endurance of about two to three hours which meant their combat radius was somewhere around 300 miles with additional long-range drop tanks the Mustang soon proved they could fly for up to eight hours that meant the p-51 could range over the farthest reaches of Nazi Germany and still return to bases in England the United States Army Air Force had its first strategic fighter and it appeared on the scene none too soon through the fall of 1943 the heavy bombers of America's 8th Air Force had been taking a beating over Germany without escort fighters the 8th b-17s and b-24s were being shot to pieces by the Luftwaffe their bomber generals had begun screaming for a new fighter that could stay with their groups all the way to Berlin and back it seemed a tall order but the new p-51 be fit the bill perfectly in the early part of the war before the mustangs came in they couldn't get escort beyond a certain point the 47 s and 38 could only take them partway and then they had to go back and when our group came we could take them clear into target and pick them back up on the other side so of course there were only a handful of us initially and but we were able to help them a little bit later of course 51 s were all over the place we used to watch him in prison camp and when they'd go over and it looked like each bomber had their own 51 escort with him the p-51s were the workhorses there were so many more p-51s because their range was farther and I think their manoeuvrability was better they were our little buddies they didn't have much use for us they they didn't understand what it's like to drive a truck in December of 1943 the first p-51 bee group the 354th arrived in England we flew the p39 up until we got to Europe well up until we left for Europe we had no idea of what we were going to fly when we landed we got the cut orders sending Jack Bradley and and Bob Stevens and myself to an English base to check out a new airplane when we got back they were already bringing p-51 Xin B model and so we were off and running and p-51 knew to combat the 354th promptly received an education at the hands of the Luftwaffe we learned that combat is not released fun sport on the first mission was my first mission was about three hours and the weather was terrible we were in danger of mid-air collision with each other I saw no enemy aircraft but one did come in and shot one plane down we lost the man a plane and a pilot on our very first mission on the first bitching I flew it was the second mission the group flew and so as find out that this is serious Pete Quesada was our commanding general head of a night fighter command at that time Pete came in and talked to us and remember him saying now you are in a very serious business not all of you will live to get home with their new weapon however the pioneer Mustangs did not take long to score on December 13 1943 a pilot from the group's 355th Fighter Squadron shot down an Emmy 110 over Kiel Germany it would be the first of seven hundred kills but the price of victory was high we went overseas with about 75 pilots in the group maybe 80 counting pilots in group and so forth that we lost 220 and you got to stop to think that were the number one scoring group in the war that we had more victories per loss than any other group and yet we lose over double our numbers in the two and a half years we were in combat two years we were in combat at first the Germans were puzzled by the appearance of the Mustang over what had been their own skies Luftwaffe pilots frequently mistook the 51 for an emmy 109 that led to some strange episodes in the air the Germans didn't know what it was and in fact on one early mission a 109 joined the formation and flew alongside for a 10 seconds before he recognized what he had done and peeled off and I headed away I don't remember whether somebody got him or not indeed the p-51 resembled the me-109 s profile so closely that even American aviators were fooled on occasion because of the greenhouse canopy it looked very much like the nemi 109 so we have one of the problems who initially had was getting shot at by our own aircraft p-47s primarily never ran into any 38 and the 17s and twenty fours despite the recognition problems both sides had with the Berlin engine Mustangs the new fighter quickly proved it could change the entire nature of the strategic air war over Europe well of course we could go a lot farther than we could previously I think the operation of the missions remained the same but the tactics had changed initially early on with the p38 we were not allowed to leave the Bombers when the tactics changed that we could go out ahead of the bombers and attack the German fighter force as it was climbing up to do battle against the heavies that was when the the shades of war changed because we had a lot better chance to kill the German air force if we could go out and attack them ahead of the bomber force rather than wait for them to attack the the bomber force the 354th Fighter Group and its new mustangs had changed the nature of the air war and in doing so had rescued the 8th Air Force's faltering strategic bombing campaign now it became absolutely essential to get as many PE ones to England as possible only then could the Luftwaffe be driven from Europe skies in December of 1943 Colonel Don Blakesley paid a visit to the 354th Fighter Group and spent several days teaching the new outfit some of the finer points of air combat tactics to use against the Luftwaffe he led our mission three times and he obviously liked what he found with the p-51 because he went back in and pulled strings until the fourth got him so he liked it no question Blakesley after flying with the 354th fell in love with the Mustang so he went to the CEO of the 8th Fighter Command General Ike Kepner and begged Kepner for mustangs for the 4th Fighter Group Kepner agreed to let his group convert provided that they get in the air and fly combat as quickly as possible and so Blakeslee agreed and he went back to to the group he trained the guys very quickly on the p-51 and within just a few days of converting they were in the skies over Germany and with their new Mustangs the 4th Fighter Group went on to become one of the highest-scoring outfits of the war they finished combat in Europe and didn't fly in the Pacific so just in Europe they scored over a thousand air and ground victories as more p51 bees arrived in England the 8th Air Force began to convert its p-47 groups in January only about 50 p-51s were combat ready to escort the Bombers over Germany by April however almost 400 were available and some of the hottest squadrons in England were now equipped with the revolutionary fighter as the number of Mustangs in Europe increased the Luftwaffe losses skyrocket through the spring of 1944 the German air force lost between 10 and 30% of its fighter pilots each month while the Luftwaffe always had planes on hand by the summer of 1944 it faced a pilot shortage so acute that it proved impossible to solve even though the Mustang was winning the war in the air the p51 B model did have a number of bugs that took time to be ironed out some of these defects could be disastrous in combat we had initially a problem with gun feed you in a high-speed turn and pull up to so many G's and it would stop your guns from firing and the wing was so narrow that you couldn't stand the the machine guns up right in the wing they had to be over at about a 45 degree angle and consequently the the belt when it came over with the shells every once in a while as it came over that hump they jammed and so it wasn't at all unusual to fire off a few bursts and have our guns jammed in fact a couple of mechanics in our group devised the system which would keep it feeding no matter how many G to pull up in the early summer of 1944 most of the issues with the p51 B have been solved the B would remain in service at least until the end of 1944 but long before that a new version of the Mustang had entered service dubbed the p-51d it would soon earn a reputation as the ultimate Mustang variant while the 51 s had 1500 14 and 15 horsepower the DS of the ones they used the most had 16 15 minutes Packard murder visibility is amazing because the DS and C's had the windshield and all the grass fared right into the back of the aircraft the D had a big bubble Campion and you had unlimited visibility man that was the biggest advantage plus the fact that they add two more tot horsepower and they had six fifty caliber machine guns on board three in each plane and they had different drop bombs shackles and stuff on him I shot the six several times just to make sure that we knew what was going to happen because they'd slow you down Oh fifty miles an hour the me and she start firing they recall would slow the airplane right down and when you had all six of them going it really just like that at this time of the war a lot of our duty was was strafing and dive-bombing and with our new DS we went out on a dive bombing mission and we had in the three missions we flew that day I think we had eight plane that peeled the wings off on the dive and the extra gun in each wing had weakened the wings so that right in the middle of your die of a wing would peel back not a terrible place to be you've got a bomb you're writing down and even if you jump you're going to be in the middle of the explosion and they we got back they grounded the p-51 and we didn't fly for a couple days and then they had modified the wing we got it back and used it the rest of the war with the success of the Mustangs in England fighter units in Italy began converting to the p-51 one of the first outfits to do so was the 332nd Fighter Group which initially received p-51 B's and C's but finished the war with the D model dubbed the Red Tails the 330s ii was one of the most unique organizations in army airforce history the 332nd was the only all-black fighter group in the United States Air Force because of the racial situation in America at that time they were subject to a great deal of abuse and racial prejudice even while they were fighting this war but despite those problems that they had with their fellow servicemen they rose above those issues and they performed admirably especially in the role of escorts for the heavy bombers in the Italian theater commanded by Colonel Benjamin o Davis jr. seen here briefing his men the Red Tails took their new job very seriously meticulously prepared and dedicated the 332nd proved to be the outstanding escort group of the war they had an excellent reputation and we were very oh we're always very happy to see them they're readily identified with that red tail and yes I can doubt I think about I can recall at least once when there were fighters approaching us and they took off after them and we went onto the target without a single fighter getting into us but I'm sure that happened more often than we knew about to the 332nd Fighter Group claims one of the most unique distinctions of World War two despite all the missions they flew and despite all the opposition they encountered over Germany especially towards the end of the war they never lost a bomber that they escorted in any of the groups that they flew with no other fighter group in World War two can claim that kind of an honor or distinction while other units scored more aerial victories the Red Tails earned the respect and admiration of the 15th Air Force's bomber crews where once the Tuskegee Airmen had been spurned and derided by the end of the war the bomber groups were requesting them as their escort we had a good escort the black guys they would they would fly the 50 once and they'd come open as was coming back off our mission and see the p1 one group would take us into the target and then the other group would escort us home and so as it was asked being an escort at home the black guys would get out there and there was one of particularly he was a car dude out there do all kinds of tricks with that plane you know it to amuse us you know the Red Tails had become the ultimate little friends and through their efforts had forged a bond in the air that transcended race and color meanwhile as groups such as the pioneer Mustangs and the Red Tails battled the Luftwaffe the p51 was poised to bring the war home to another enemy the Japanese soon Mustangs would control the skies over Tokyo itself ensuring Japan's total and irreversible defeat early Mustang variants such as the p-51a and 836 had seen action against the Japanese as early as 1943 in the China Burma India theater those early days of Mustang operations were unspectacular but the plane did prove to be faster than almost anything the Japanese could pit against it most frequently however the early Mustangs were called upon to deliver ground strikes strafing targets in Burma China Mustang pilots would also go after shipping along the Burma Coast hoping to choke off the supplies to the Imperial Army fighting in the jungle it was not until the capture of Iwo Jima that the Mustang truly came into its own in the Pacific they had a whole bunch of harming p-51 Mustangs that's the reason we took down spend all that blood was to provide a staging base for the p-51s to escort the b-29s on their raids against Japan the 29s roll out of Saipan and Tinian we just come from 700 miles south and the 50 ones would pick them up or meet him as they come over Saipan or OE one way to Tokyo and s corner Tokyo and back which was 15 hour miles up and back to to evil these fighter escort missions taking the b-29s to Japan from Iwo Jima took anywhere from seven to eight hours to complete and even though the p51 was an excellent airplane to fly the strain on the legs and lower backs of these pilots for flying for that length of time caused many of them to be cramped up when they returned from these missions to the point where they had to be assisted out of their airplanes by the ground crews and so to do this day after day over and over again took a great deal of courage and stamina on the parts of these pilots first route of missions we flew or bomber escort and once we got there and flying up down the bomber line we could pick out targets on the ground and go down and nothing definitely first and later on we had definite targets like at suyi airbase was one of our first targets and we the b-29 to take us up there specifically to make this run on this airbase they'd wait for us offshore we win get the aircraft to defend the installations on these air bases in Japan betaine 29s on this type of mission we're just escort escorting us there our navigational planes and they stay about 20,000 feet offshore we always gave them a high cover at least for p-51 stay above them protect them waiting for us to get off the target come back one occasion after we'd finished working over this target we honed in on the beach Wayne I'm sending us the signal the locator where you can find him as we approach that we see the Japanese starting to make passes on our b-29 which gave us a little bit of work so he was our ticket back home and fortunately the high cover for been at this and they shot down the attacking Japanese before we got there by the spring of 1945 Mustangs roamed the length and breadth of the Japanese home islands protecting the heavy bombers streams while searching for targets of opportunity japan's interceptor force was soon driven from the skies so happened on this mission over Japan we're flying high cover for the b-29s we're up around 25,000 feet and suddenly I lost power and the manifold pressure dropped way back and I thought I had serious engine problems I sweat it off a little while like call my wingman so I'm gonna have to go down and I was just looking for a spot to bail out because this is a they firebombed Tokyo and Yokohama pretty badly and the fireballs are coming up five thousand feet high and so I thought I'd get out of offshore far as the Kurd if I had to jump out if I was descending trying to get my engine running again you notice the several Tojo's below us and climbing towards the b-29 and I was directly behind one toes you up so I just closed in that's they could open fire and the debris started flying off and they my wingman shot one on the left side so I still was concerned about me injured I forgot it during the combat and I'd realize till I got well done off the target the engines running pretty well again with little fuel available and even fewer experienced pilots Japan's air defenses collapsed if there was a quite a difference in the Japanese plans near the end of the war in fact I think the group we ran into the Tojo's I think was this a big training group because they were just flying is no evasive attempt or anything on their part he was closed in autumn and just like shooting ducks if I'd had a better angel I would have stayed longer in that group but it's several of were shot down by the other p-51 pilot but the summer of 1945 the Iwo based Mustangs had gained total control of the skies over Japan without fear of interception the p-51s went down on the deck and searched for targets of opportunity nothing was safe from their murderous 50 calibers when Japan finally surrendered in August of 1945 there were hundreds of p-51s base on Iwo Jima ready to support the planned invasion of Kyushu fortunately the surrender made that operation unnecessary in the final months of the war in Europe almost 2,000 Mustangs protected the American heavy bombers such a protective shield proved almost impossible for the Lew cloth or the penetrate bomber losses plummeted and Germany's cities and industries were systematically devastated by the American strategic bombing campaign with the fighters knocking down every German plane they saw in the sky in the Bombers pulverizing Germany's war industry on the ground the Allied air forces were virtually unopposed in the air flak and small-arms fire however still posed a great threat especially to the liquid cooled engine of the Mustang we were out on a Search and Destroy mission I found six German trucks on the road went in strafing and set four of them on fire on the first pass and pulled up I had not seen any return fire so I went back to get the other two and when I went back the second time I find myself going across a open field with a hundred German soldiers on their knees with rifles firing at us and probably they came from the trucks we burn and p-51 will not take a lot of punishment if you lose your coolant you're done so and I lost my coolant I got up to 8,000 feet and the coolant the hip temperature hit the red beg and there was no way I began to lose power started calling for mayday for a fix that I pulled the red handle and the canopy flew off just like they told me it would I started to jump and I had my shoulder strapped laying on my shoulder pulled me back I picked up the microphone said goodbye undid the shoulder staff made another jump I hit the end of the radial chord couldn't get back dropped back in as long as I was back I said goodbye unplugged the radio made a third attempt and got my head out I'm going 100 miles an hour 105 maybe in the wind caught my goggles and pulled them out about a foot from my head I pulled my head back and they snapped back and I dropped back down in the seat so I plugged the radio in and say goodbye I took the helmet off and forth trying out found myself hanging very quietly over a tank battle down below me quiet up in the air no sound in the air but a lot of sound grande fire both heavy and light gunfire down below I was east of Metz and the German still held Metz I get on the ground I hid under a bush a German half-track pulls into the field and two soldiers with rifles were looking for me I thought well they know I'm here so I stood up and put my hand up got halfway there and and I noticed that over the German iron cross was a crudely painted white star and there were a captured vehicle and they were part of army Patton's Third Army and they were 40 miles ahead of where they thought people thought they were and so I got a ride with them and the next day they flew me back by a KUB observation plane my bass even though the liquid-cooled engine was a drawback when the 50 ones were used to hit ground targets the Mustang was still considered to be the best mass-produced fighter of the war and some would argue of all time near the end of World War two the Mustangs apex of success had been reached but even at this pinnacle the shadows of its own downfall could be seen on the horizon with the advent of the Mishima 262 the first operational jet fighter the Germans had really dealt the deathblow to the piston engine fighter design and while the mr. Schmidt 262 really represented the future the pilots flying the older designs the Mustangs really figured out in the final days of the war how best to fight their aircraft against this new technological marvel and so on many occasions the Mustang pilots actually came out on top despite the mr. Schmidt 262 his amazing speed on this particular day in April 45 I was on a Search and Destroy mission I was at 12,000 feet with four plane I spotted movement down below me and I recognized the silhouette of a Messerschmitt 262 jet and I had 10,000 feet altitude he was a 2 so I rolled over I was determined he wasn't going to get away from his the life I beat Chuck Yeager through the sound barrier I thought the airplane was coming apart I went into what's called compressibility lost complete control of the aircraft it felt like the control stick had become unhook it was all over the cockpit and nothing happened as I'm going down to lower altitude the thicker the air got the more I began to feel something on the stick I prayed for it to be there and I began to ease out and I came out and would you believe the 262 was right square in front of me I didn't I don't think I moved two degrees before I started shooting and I shot a piece of one wing off and shot the left jet on set the left jet on fire and I was ov er running him so I pulled off and was going to come back but by the time I pulled off he was going straight up p-51s won't go straight up very long ice tried to go after him but he was going straight up and I thought I'd lost him one jet was burning and all of a sudden he stopped and started sliding back down tail first and he ejected and hung in his parachute and I felt like champion of the world I just I was a static in 1996 I think it was I went to the German fighter pilots meeting and met the pilot I shot down he and his wife both gave me a big hug he says you saved my life he said I had 25 pilots in my unit when you shot me down and he said he had a bullet wound in his left side so he never had to fly again and because of that he said the two week - three weeks later there were only four of my unit alive and he said so you saved my life I said no problem buddy any time when the war ended the new jet fighters like the p80 and f-86 soon eclipsed the Mustang as America's premier air superiority fighter but for a fleeting moment the p-51 had become a king of the skies but all too soon the march of technology had bumped it from its throne within just a few years of the wars and the Mustang had been rally second line steps all together about 15,000 p-51s had been built but thousands were scrapped wholesale in the months following the end of the war others a precious few were sold off to racing pilots and enthusiasts during the first year of the Korean War the Mustang reclaimed a bit of its lost glory as it was pressed back into service as a ground attack aircraft but with its vulnerable liquid-cooled engine the p51 was replaced as quickly as possible with more modern jet aircraft today the once mighty hoard of Mustangs that conquered the skies of Europe has been reduced to less than a hundred flying examples every year at air shows throughout the United States these precious relics take to the air before crowds of thousands reminding Americans of our proud aviation heritage and those grueling days when Mustangs filled the skies and a desperate fight for freedom never had anybody say they didn't want to fly in fact it was just the other way around people hanging on my back saying come on he flew yesterday I want to put me on the day does that mean it was fun no it's dead serious we did every job we were given the entire war and and did them well it cost us a lot of people it was another way you prove what Sherman said was right the war is hell and it is you

Channel: 354thpmfg

Views: 434,309

Rating: 4.7707219 out of 5

Keywords: P-51 Mustang, WWII Fighter Aircraft, 354th FG

Id: QuaTQ_orc7U

Length: 53min 11sec (3191 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 29 2013