The P-51 Mustang: The Fighter that Won World War II

it has gone down in history as one of the greatest American aircraft ever built a Masterwork of Aeronautical Engineering that the US and the Alli Powers World War II were Beyond lucky to have to its Pilots it handled like a modern sports car to its enemies it was a malevolent force of Destruction and to its home nation the P-51 Mustang was nothing short of indispensable thundering across the aerial battlefields of World War II the Mustang would do far more than just win dog fights instead it would turn the tide and earn credit for the Global shift from a war that Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan seemed Almost sure to win into a Cascade of Allied victories that ultimately wrote the history that we know on today's episode of Mega projects we're going to explore the vaunted legacy of the P-51 what it was why it mattered and most importantly what it did to etch its name in history [Music] ah Squarespace the sponsor of today's video thank you so much if you don't have Squarespace yet and you 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you want to make money another way start a Squarespace store and find some widget that you want to sell I I don't really know how e-commerce works but you know you can do it with Squarespace they've got also flexible checkout options so you can do a buy now pay later that sort of thing or uh accept Paypal except Apple pay accept all major credit cards fantastic so when you're ready to get started with Squarespace go to squarespace.com meegar projects and you'll get a free trial and when you're ready to launch use the code Mega projects and you'll get 10% off your first purchase of a website or a domain and now back to today today's video for an aircraft that would one day become the Lynch pin of America's air war in World War II it's perhaps more than a little ironic that if it had been up to the United States alone the P-51 Mustang might never have existed at all to understand why that is we got to travel back before the start of the second world war all the way to 1938 a moment in time when the world bore little resemblance to what it would become just a few short Years Later by by 1938 it was clear to just about every major power around the world that a war on the European continent was brewing largely on account of that upstart German Chancellor with the ratty little mustache Germany perhaps alongside some of its allies was going to try to make a play of territory and if it did the Grand Cascade of War across Europe would see the British drawn in Sooner or Later by this time the British understood that their English-speaking Brethren across the pond had little interest in coming to their defense directly America had passed more than its fair share of legislative acts aimed at preserving its neutrality as the nation staggered up bright after the onew punch of the Great Depression and the dust Ball but Britain had reason to believe that America would offer support in other ways the Americans were generally hostile to Germany and while the United States was still a firmly isolationist Nation both Washington and London understood that they'd rather be on the same side of a war than be adversaries and for the United Kingdom a quiet partnership with America had won tangible benefit Above All Else America's sheer industrial might the US hadn't quite surged levels of production that it would hit by the end of the war but they still had the ability to build massive amounts of military hardware in factories that would be safe even if the Nazis made it to the shore of the English Channel the British government knew it wanted American made fighter aircraft but it also knew that the planes America had at its disposal weren't quite up to Snuff Europe at that time had a set of standards for its fighter aircraft especially in the UK and American planes of the pre-war era were generally just not on that level the only plane that came close the P40 Tomahawk was hard to get with the company that made it Curtis wri not able to build enough tomahawks on a timeline that would meet British needs with war Brewing on the continent Britain went to another company North American Aviation or NAA to see if they'd be willing to manufacture more Tomah Hawks with Curtis wri's approval but NAA well they had a better idea now we've got to take a moment and knowled just how big of a leap it was for NAA to be offering a fighter basically created from scratch especially when Britain had one shot to procure an aircraft they might need within months you see NAA had never designed a fighter aircraft before something that the British were well aware of but NAA ended up not having to instead they purchased Curtis rights designs for a new aircraft already called the Mustang and over accusations of plagiarism by Curtis Wright Engineers NAA agreed with the British government to build hundreds of the new aircraft by the time the agreement was signed War had already broken out across Europe although France still appeared as if it would hold out by the time the first Mustang prototype was ready Germany had conquered the continent as it took shape the Mustang offered a couple of clear improvements on other fightercraft of the day utilize new air fors the forward- facing shape of the wing that allowed it to minimize drag at high speeds and its cooling system was positioned and designed in a way that not only reduced drag but also also created a small jet effect of its own to push the Mustang along in Flight nonetheless it was affordable for the crown at a price of just $40,000 am per unit at the time making it far cheaper than a Spitfire toting four machine guns on the wings it was more than able to hold its own in combat and by September of 1940 less than 4 months after Britain's order was placed the first Mustang prototype was rolled out it would take its Maiden flight 47 days later on the 26th of October 1940 by which time Britain had nearly doubled its original order but with so much from Britain in this NAA aircraft it was only a matter of time before America 2o started looking a little closer at what exactly was going on within its own borders early in the production process the US sequestered two of Britain's planes then designated the na 73 for study and not long after they carved out a total of 57 from Britain's production line designating most of them as reconnaissance aircraft it was met with resistance from part of the US Army Air Force but it also had its strong supporters within the branch including officers who knew full well of its burgeoning potential and when a new Rolls-Royce engine came along that could greatly enhance the plane's abilities at high altitudes and high speeds the usaaf was convinced the first order America would place came in the summer of 1942 on the order of hundreds of them but even that was just a small taste of what was to [Music] come the Mustang was a beast of an aircraft for its time and a clear Step Above any anything America had to offer at the start of the war over 20 variants of the P-51 would be built over the course of its service life but we're going to focus on the most prolific of them all a line in which over 8,000 Fighters would be ultimately built that was the P-51D assembled primarily in Inglewood California which surged into the air in mid 1944 and eventually did much of the leg work to bring the war back to Berlin and Tokyo the Mustang was a single seat fighter clocking in at a total length tipto tail of 32t 3 in that's just a hair under 10 m its wings B reached 37 ft exactly that's 11.3 M with a total empty weight of 7600b or 3500 kg it could take off at a weight of over 12,000 or 5,500 kg an impressive carrying capacity for an aircraft of its day powered by a packed Motorcar Company built version of the Rolls-Royce v650 Merlin engine the plane boasted 1,720 horsepower at War emergency speed this was a special short-term boost setting that was built into some aircraft of the World War II years in order to deal with crises like surprise bomber raides the Mustang had a top speed of 440 mph in level flight 710 km per hour although several individual aircraft have been recorded going a good bit quicker than that it cruised at a respectable 362 mph nearly 600 km per hour and boasted a range when equipped with external tanks of 1,650 Mi or 2,660 km that's enough for a pilot flying out of London to easily reach Berlin Warsaw Sicily or even Triple E and just short of the distance between Tokyo and Manila making it ideal to accompany waves of Allied bombers in both of the war's major theaters equipped with its Merlin engine it could climb to a service ceiling of 42,000 ft a bit short of 13 km into the sky at a rate of over half a mile or barely under a kilometer per minute in terms of armament the Mustang came in packing pure heat including 6 50 caliber Browning machine guns three to each Wing they could carry up to 10 rockets on its underwing pylons or a bomb on each wing of Weights of up to 500 per bomb but as impressive as those statistics are by themselves they really stand out when we place them in context both alongside the aircrafts that the P-51 joined in service and also against the aircraft that have to defeat in battle on the Allied side the P-51 proved itself significantly better than the other aircraft it was working with the plane had replaced the Curtis P40 was significantly slower with less than half the range even if it was flying at lower power levels to increase its endurance and it couldn't come close to the high Al due performance that the Mustang offered the distinctive twin boomed P38 Lightning of which just over 10,000 were built cruised nearly 100 milph slower and while it could hit similar altitudes into near comparable range it wasn't nearly so Nimble in a dog fight the p47 Thunderbolt was a formidable aircraft in its own right and could fulfill its own duties at high altitude while carrying more Weaponry but fell over 600 bares short in range finally the British spit fat impressive as it was still could only hit speeds 70 PES per hour slower with a pitifully small range that the Mustang could easily triple on its worst day and when it burst onto the battlefield against German and Japanese warplanes it was only a matter of time before those axis Pilots realized that they were terribly outmatched over 30,000 farco Vol 190s were produced for Nazi Germany but they performed poorly at the altitudes where the P-51 thrived an issue that the Germans didn't address until far too late in the war it was slower with a lower range and carried a less effective array of Weaponry the mm bf0109 of which 35,000 were ultimately made was an exceptional aircraft in its own right but in every regard it fell just a hair short of what the P-51 was capable of and in any case it mostly served on the Eastern Front against the Soviets after the fw190 came onto the scene in Western Europe to the extent that the Mustang met the Mitsubishi zero in combat it found itself over 100 mph faster at both maximum and cruise speeds with a considerably higher ceiling and a much better set of armament something that an individual zero could compensate for with its nimbleness in one-on-one engagements but that it couldn't deal with in larger head-to-head battles the Japanese playing the P-51 faced more often was the Nakajima hayate this was poorly equipped to fight at high altitudes and it was outgunned by the Mustang as well although it did decently well overall during the war by the time the P-51 was ready to enter military service in 1942 the tides of World War II had shifted substantially enough that an outright Allied defeat at least anytime soon was unlikely Britain was holding out on one side of the English Channel and America had just joined the fry while the Germans didn't seem to have much appetite for an urgent fullscale Invasion without first having established air and Maritime superiority at the very least the war was going to lead to a stalemate but as the Mustang was about to show the world there was a big difference between not losing a war and winning it and the Mustang is here to win the P-51 would fill a wide range of combat roles as we'll explore in just a moment but the place where it would ultimately make the greatest difference was as a fighter escort for bombing runs against fortified or well- defended enemy targets it would serve alongside America's B17 Flying Fortress and B24 Liberator as well as the later model b29 super Fortress an absolute Beast of an aircraft who 10 onboard machine guns and three onboard cannons allowed to operate in better symbiosis with the Mustang than perhaps any other bomber of the war on the British side it would fly alongside the handle page Halifax and the short Sterling plus the later model Avro Lancaster before the Mustang arrived Britain had little doubt that it would be useful based on their experiences in air combat with the Germans but the Americans still weren't convinced American Doctrine at that time followed the general idea that quote the bomber would always get through and that if anyone did come to back a bomb a squadron up they were better off flying a heavily armed and armored gunship using designs that hadn't yet been built in fact it was thought for a time that in a practical sense it was impossible for a single engine fighter aircraft to ever have the range afforded bombers but once the Mustang was actually allowed to show its stuff even the US quickly realized that there was no better alternative to what this plane could do much of this comes down to how exactly fighter aircraft was supposed to work alongside Allied bombers during raids and runs on enemy targets Allied Doctrine called for the combined fight b a force to fly in formation uninterrupted into enemy territory and then once they were attacked by axis aircraft Fighters were welcome to break formation and go win some dog fights this was something that successive fighter escort aircraft struggled mightily with before the Mustang came along many lacked fuel reserves that would enable them to follow bomber aircraft to their target meaning they'd have to turn back and leave the bombers exposed in practice that meant that Germany could just wait until Fighters turn back and then swarm undefended waves of bombers that had only there board guns for self-defense adding Fu capacity to Fighters would have made them bigger and slower and thus both less capable in dog fights and less able to catch up to the bombers if they had to make a quick stop to deal with the lwaa but the P-51 was able to offer complete coverage of just about any Journey the Allies could cook up for their bomber Fleet and it could even carry a couple of bombs itself in the process with those bombers protected strikes against even the most staunchly defended axess targets became possible Dresden Hamburg and even B L all came into range for attacks that were sure to still result in German attempts to stop the bombers before they drop their payload or destroy them on the way back but where those attempts could be dealt with far easier bomber casualty rates dropped starkly after the P-51 was able to operate on mass across Europe especially during return flights where after dropping their payloads bombers had struggled to make it out of enemy territory without being swarmed by fighter aircraft from all directions those Journeys went now far more survivable for all manner of long-range aircraft meaning that now the Allies could launch those operations far more often the p- 51's first months of service came as part of the royal Air Force when the first production line aircraft was still using engines that made them unfit for high altitude flight for a while Mustangs were employed for ground attack and reconnaissance including in operation Jubilee an unsuccessful attempt by over 6,000 primarily Canadian infantry troops in a tank regiment to attack the coordinated French Port of deep four Mustang squadrons would fly over the battle fending off German aircraft with high effectiveness even though the mission ultimately failed Britain would pick up around a thousand of the aircraft and would fly them through the war's end later in the war they would used by the british's Scout aircraft hunting down the launch sites for V1 cruise missiles then called The Flying bomb or the buz bomb they were also set loose for small unit raids over Continental Europe flying low over the water for long periods of time often at altitudes as low as just 15 M that's 50 ft before zigzagging across the landscape and damaging important Targets in that role they were consistently able to outrun every model of enemy aircraft sent after them to intercept and in all they destroy hundreds of locomotives barges and parked enemy aircraft at the expense of just eight airframes lost in the United States the Mustang began its service operating of the British home Mes in August of 1942 after a slow first few months they'd be integrated into the So-Cal combined bomber offensive long-running operation that allowed for Round the Clock bomber operations in which American daytime attacks would give way to British nighttime raids in the early months of the CBO America seemed to want to do everything but accompany their bombers with p-51s trying first to build gunship escorts then to use the P38 lining and finally the p47 Thunderbolt but eventually the Mustang was able to break through whatever Mentor block had taken hold of America's wartime leaders and after yet another attempt to minimize the Mustangs role by using them only to retrieve bombers that have been escorted by p38s and p-47s to their Target American leaders finally realized that just going with the P-51 was clearly the best option and probably had been all along when they were truly Unleashed they proved able to dominate German heavy Fighters like the bf10 so badly that the 110 had to be withdrawn from combat and the lighter aircraft we already mentioned the fw190 and the BF 109 were both made significantly less effective when they were Laden with the sorts of heavy Weaponry that would have allowed them to bring down the bombers in the first place but the escort role wasn't the only place where the Mustang excelled and at the start of 1944 Major General James dittle had the pleasure of giving Mustang Pilots a bit of news that we imagine must have put a very dangerous gleam in their eye now with the Allies able to reliably protect their bombers if need be the Mustang was free to play a much more proactive role across Germany when it was dispatched the goal was no longer just close bomber protection it was Air Supremacy and where the Mustang squadrons thought they could achieve that Supremacy by engaging in low altitude dog fights sweeping far ahead to attack incoming German interceptors feeling Devastation to parked aircraft on the grounds or whatever else they could desire they were not just permitted they were encouraged to do that within months the Mustang had been the lynchpin in achieving not just air superiority but Air Supremacy across Western Europe the Germans attempted to offer direct challenges with their own fighter aircraft including in massive counter swarms of anti- bomber heavy Fighters and lighter aircraft that could distract the Mustangs but even that was a change that came too late if the Mustangs were still tasked with close protection of the bombers the tactic may have been meaningful but with the Mustangs flying as they pleased they were often able to intercept the Swarms or destroy them on the ground if anything the change seemed to piss off the Mustang pilots who embarked on their own Campaign Of Destruction against luffer targets so successful were they that even the British who had long adhered to the principles of nighttime bombing raids in order to keep their aircraft protected joined the Americans back in broad daylight led by the Mustangs the Allies were able to devastate German airbases across Europe so badly that there was soon no more aircraft to destroy on the tarmac the Mustang played a key role in ground scraping attacks and then when it proved vulnerable to Small Arms fire it provided effective OverWatch and backup while less vulnerable strike Fighters took the lead over in the Pacific Theater the Mustang was provided to Chinese nationalist forces and stationed on aimer in order to begin accompanying American bombers on runs over the Japanese home Islands so effective was the P-51 in fighting Japanese zeros that Japan all but gave up opposing the plane in the air ands the resulting bombing campaign would ultimately be devastating for Japan's biggest cities the aircraft did sustain challenges from two last upstarts near the close of the war the rocket powered me1 163b Point defense Interceptor and the jet powered me 262 fighter aircraft the first of its kind while the 163b would ultimately be little more than a nuisance the German jet fighters were far more Troublesome they were much faster than the Mustang or any other propeller plane and they were armed with for heavy cannons and two dozen Rockets each making them a potent threat against both Fighters and the bombers that they protected although they came along late in the war they proved to be more than even the Mustang could handle in a head-to-head battle but when the P-51 met a challenge it couldn't defeat by Brute Force it's Pilots instead solved their problem bya tactics before long Mustangs were destroying the Jets on the tarmac in large numbers and timing their approach to catch the Debs during takeoff when they were most vulnerable yet another challenge during this time the V1 flying bomb actually an early cruise missile proved to be somewhat easier to manage seeing as the Mustang ended up being able to keep Pace with the missiles as they flew when World War II came to a close the P-51 would be assigned to the informal duty of ushering out America's age piston engine Fighters and holding the line until new jet fighters like the p80 could show up in force across America's Arsenal it was joined in that role by the f82 better known as the twin Mustang which was exactly what it sounded like two Mustang fuselages joined with a common wing taale only a couple of hundred would ever be built and they arrived too late to make any difference in World War II so the original Mustang there's the far better proven and more prolific aircraft took the lead under the new US Air Force it was redesignated the f-51 and it entered what its handlers had believed at least at the time would be a quiet and anticlimactic end to its heroic years of service or that's what they thought until well the Korean War began the Mustang was critical to both American and Korean efforts in the early months of the war sent over on mass on the decks of aircraft carriers and distributed quickly upon arrival in Korea they wouldn't serve as Interceptor aircraft or even Fighters at all after all the dog fights above the peninsula were quickly becoming the exclusive domain of the jet fighter instead the Mustang served primarily as a strike aircraft taking advantage of their ability to fly at ranges that jet aircraft just couldn't match including from American bases on Japanese territory it sustained High airframe losses during the conflict at least relative to what it's seen during most of World War II because its high-risk operations brought it within range of that same ground fire that had Bruen so problematic over France eventually the f-51 would be phased out of American Service although it wouldn't leave the Korean theater until 1953 when it departed it was replaced with the f84 fighter aircraft of the US Air Force and the f9f panther of the Navy both of them jet planes in Australia they were eventually replaced by the glou meteor while in South Africa they were replaced by the f86 saber the last Mustang in the Air Force wouldn't be withdrawn until 1957 or which time hundreds of the aircraft were flushed into the civilian market for War Bird collectors and since then a range of former p-51s have become famous in their own right with private Pilots behind the stick the Mustang flew in the air forces from Canada to Indonesia to the Philippines for decades after the war and in smaller Nations they'd continue to serve even into the 1980s with the last Mustang in military use retired from the Dominican Air Force all the way in 1984 today hundreds of Mustangs still sit in hangers across the US many of which remain flyable and the United States Air Force has even begun to employ a spiritual success of the b-51 in the Modern Age and that would be the special ops attack aircraft the OA 1K Sky warden for which we've done a whole separate video if you're interested since the Mustang left service generation after generation of fighter aircraft have come and gone in its dead from the saber to the star fighter and the Phantom from the Tomcat to the Viper to the Raptor the United States has had no shortage AG of worldclass planes at its disposal all capable of things that the P-51 and its Pilots never could have imagined but if there's one American fighter aircraft in all of us history that's proved itself more completely in the line of duty than any other that would be the Mustang the fighter that won World War II [Music] oh

Channel: Megaprojects

Views: 283,554

Keywords: p51 mustang documentary, p51 fighter plane, p51 fighter jet, north american p-51 mustang, p51 combat fighter, p 51 mustang, p-51 mustang, p-51d mustang, p51 fighter aircraft, p51 mustang, p51d mustang, world war 2, mustang p 51, mustang p51d, world war ii, mustang plane, p-51 vs me 262, mustang airplane, mustang p51, p51 vs me 262, aviation, air force, ww2 stories, p-51, ww2 planes

Id: TsLtPcm24mI

Length: 24min 34sec (1474 seconds)

Published: Mon May 20 2024