XP-82 - Fate, Circumstance, & Necessity

[Music] xp-80 2 was developed by North American it was requested by half Arnold the director of the Army Air Corps at the time as we were losing an awful lot of single inch and Mustangs and their pilots because they were trying to escort b-29s from Saipan to Japan and back b-29s accrues at 300 plus the single inch of Mustangs depending on power settings would cruise at 240 260 280 could not keep up the 29 SS burn a whole bunch more fuel Eggar smooth the head designer for the Mustang series for North America had pencil sketched out a multi-engine Mustang back in 1941 and showed it to have Arnold have looked at it and says build it the first flight of this airplane was was 15 err 4:45 it didn't fly well at all because the up swooping props about a month later or two months later HAP Arnold show up in North America needed fix this problem didn't loose a contract they they swap the engines the rest was history so then the airplane went to NACA the predecessor to NASA it was brought up there where it was a testbed for the eight gun pod there was an eight gun pod that would hang underneath the center section plus the radar pod which stuck out beyond the propeller so the propellers would not disturb the signal and then it was bombs and rockets it flew with NACA from approximately midsummer 1945 until November 1949 would it landed on a icy runway and skidded off son the runway and buried one landing here and bent the center section so Walter supply I heard about the airplane having the accident and it plans to scrap it so he went up there and he worked out a deal with him to buy it for $300 and they kept the engines and kept the props back in 92 I'd heard about this place so I was in the airplane business so I called and asked if I could come by and look and I did so I was up there again in 2007 December 23rd 2007 doing an IRS appraisal so I looked under some sheet metal I said oh here's another Mustang he said no this that's an 82 and I said you sold your 82 he said I had two of them this is the XP 82 the twin mustang the first one to fly and and I said them as can i buy it he says no we're probably going to sell something in April I said can I put my hat in the ring and and buy this one from you when you're ready to sell it [Music] so I knew very well in December that if anybody else had heard about that airplane any Mustang collector it had been gone so what I did is I started going to anybody else in the country that I knew had any 82 parts and I told nobody what I was planning on doing they all thought that I was going to try to put piece together in 82 [Music] in April 2008 Margaret called me miss Margaret called me I always called her Miss Margaret and she invited me up and we would like to talk about the 82 we were offered a figure years earlier I said what was that figure and she told me the figure and I go that's it's way too little money I say Miss Margaret I will never cheat you it's worth lots more than that and Walter looks at me like I have green hair and he says I've never had anybody offered me more than what I was asking for something I said tell me more and I'll tell you when to stop we come up to about six times of what they originally wanted and I wrote him a check [Music] so I got all the parts Mike Nixon built both of our engines empty propeller stepped up and built propellers Pat Harker has been extremely helpful to us we've been able to go up and take lots of pictures lots of measurements office airplane basically the same airplane with Allison engines everything firewall forward is different it's an extremely complicated airplane but a very straightforward design and most people think it's just to Mustang few slices put together no there are only five parts that are the same elevator trim wheel canopy crank the accumulator for the hydraulic system half of the tail wheel because this is a through axle and not a stub axle like a Mustang has and that the trim tab hinge points for the elevator and the rub rudder trim - that's it everything is there for the canopy the windshields all the cowling all the landing gear the wheels tires and the brakes the entire hydraulic system everything is different we got all of the drawings from North American through a guy in California and so if anybody needed a part or wanted to know what this was or where that went I have all the drawings and I could look those up there are 272 airplanes built two prototypes which were Merlin engine and then 20 following of which were B models which also had Merlin engines so there are 22 Merlin engine ones built and 250 allison Perrin ones [Music] our whole point here is to keep them flying so to speak and anything I could do to put another one in the sky I'll do that I think they deserve to make the Oshkosh show they've been 10 years of taking this punches the piles of scrap and making this incredible airplane this is not the longest project I've done but it's approaching that we've worked on it now ten years and we have two hundred and approximately two hundred and three thousand men and woman hours in it and that's including all the subcontract shops that have built everything it's been rewarding and it's gonna be I don't know the words I'm just glad it happened put it that way there's some kind of a provenance with this airplane er there's a there's an order to this in the universe that I don't understand because there were too many coincidences of finding engines and finding this I feel like it's another mechanical miracle as a bomber guy usually bombed where people are always interested in bombers no b-17s p25 so for like that usually then I'm interested in fighters and bombers together but when I saw the 82 is love at first sight but I looked at that as someday alone one of those so someday I will fly one [Music] the dream is just about ready to come true

Channel: EAA

Views: 852,294

Rating: 4.9053907 out of 5

Keywords: plane, flying, flight, aviation, eaa, oshkosh, airplane, mustang, wwii, warbird

Id: WQP0IHH3FTs

Length: 7min 37sec (457 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 23 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/benracer999]

Fun fact from the video, only 5 parts of the twin mustang are actually the same as on the p-51. Everything else is unique to the 82.

[u/LightTankTerror]

1:18 and 1:31 show some heavy ass armament options btw. I’m counting 2x1000lb* on the center, 1x500lb* on each wing, and 5 HVARs in the Christmas tree mounts (See: P-38L for example in game) under each wing. The latter shows the center mount bombs removed and the gunpod installed in its place.

Gaijin pls, F-82E to 5.7, repair cost to 10k, and then gimme moar ordnance.

*^{I’m not entirely sure if those are 2000lb bombs on the center mount and 1000lb bombs on the wings, or 1000lb bombs on the center mount and 500lb bombs on the wings.}

[u/FirstDagger]

Already posted 4 days ago

[u/Egregorian]

Great work