INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Lieutenant Colonel John C
Confused, he radios the control tower
But no sooner does Meyer finish sending the message than the shocking reality of the situation reveals itself before his widening eyes:
fifty German fighters are swarming toward the base, part of a desperate wide-scale Luftwaffe comeback operation to wipe out Allied aircraft
on the ground and turn the tide of World War 2.Caught off guard and outnumbered four to one, the odds are looking grim
before it crashes into the ground
fighter-bomber used during World War II and the Korean War, among other conflicts
The Mustang was designed in 1940 by a team headed by James H
Kindelberger of North American Aviation (NAA) in response to a requirement of the British Purchasing Commission.The commission approached
NAA to build Curtiss P-40 fighters under license for the Royal Air Force (RAF)
Rather than build an old design from another company, NAA proposed the design and production of a more modern fighter
The prototype NA-73X airframe was completed on 9 September 1940, 102 days after contract signing, achieving its first flight on 26
October.The Mustang was designed to use the Allison V-1710 engine without an export-sensitive turbo supercharger or a multi-stage
supercharger, resulting in limited high-altitude performance
The aircraft was first flown operationally and very successfully by the RAF and as a tactical-reconnaissance aircraft and fighter-bomber
In mid 1942, a development project known as the Rolls-Royce Mustang X, replaced the Allison engine with a Rolls-Royce Merlin 65 two-stage
inter-cooled supercharged engine
altitudes above 15,000 ft (4,600 m) without sacrificing range.Following receipt of the test results and after further flights by USAAF
pilots, the results were so positive that North American began work on converting several aircraft developing into the P-51B/C (Mustang Mk
The definitive version, the P-51D, was powered by the Packard V-1650-7, a license-built version of the two-speed, two-stage-supercharged
Merlin 66, and was armed with six .50 caliber (12.7 mm) AN/M2 Browning machine guns.From late 1943 into 1945, P-51Bs and P-51Cs
helped ensure Allied air superiority in 1944
The P-51 was also used by Allied air forces in the North African, Mediterranean, Italian, and Pacific theaters
During World War II, Mustang pilots claimed to have destroyed 4,950 enemy aircraft.[At the start of the Korean War, the Mustang, by then
the Mustang then became a specialized fighter-bomber
Despite the advent of jet fighters, the Mustang remained in service with some air forces until the early 1980s
