Saturday, April 21, 2018

Why We Win


 







P-51 MUSTANG
My pick for the best fighter aircraft in WW2.  And, stuff I did not know.  Like, after the war you could buy a surplus Mustang for $1.  Yes.  One dollar.  Today a working P51 will cost you $2,000,000. Did you know that it still holds the world record for (as is)  altitude?  Or that I flew one in the Korean War?


What was the fatal flaw that came to light during the Korean war?
4/21/2018 11:11:00 AM 7 Comments

"If the number of Islamic terror attacks continues at the current rate, candlelight vigils will soon be the number-one cause of global warming. "
Argus Hamilton


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7 comments:

Skoonj said...

Fatal flaw? Maybe more than one, but this was the MiG-15. When it got really fast the hydraulic system couldn't pull it out of a dive. So if it was heading down, and fast, the result was often going into the ground. When our guys discovered that, they tried to get the MiG into trail position, and then they got a kill without firing a shot. Our jets had and have hydraulics that allow pulling out of a dive even when at high speed.

4/21/18, 11:38 AM
drew458 said...

Wasn't there something about the radiators, since it was a liquid cooled engine? Minor combat damage would cause a leak, and shortly thereafter the engine was toast. I think I've also heard something about problems with the cooling doors for those radiators, um, maybe it was that opening them slowed the plane down a lot?

4/21/18, 12:56 PM
Rodger the Real King of France said...

A rifle shot in the air scoop would cause it to heat,lose power,crash.

4/21/18, 2:42 PM
toadold said...

They had a long large hose from the engine to the radiator.
One thing not mentioned was that the Mustang was one of the first American Aircraft designed with large batch production in mind and used tooling in place of a lot of fiddly hand work.
Skin panels had tabs with tooling holes in them. Pin the panel into the tooling, use drill jigs to drill the rived and screw holes then attach enough fasteners to hold it place on the fixture, then trim off the tabs. Butt the next panel to the trimmed panel and repeat.
One WWII squadron was reassigned to P47 Thunderbolts since they could take ground fire better than the Mustang. Which was kind of funny since the P47 was originally supposed to be a high altitude bomber destroyer.

4/21/18, 7:15 PM
Anonymous said...

Two million dollars? This last week I won a P-51 at a $5 raffle. Mind you it's 1:32 scale but I think I can enjoy just the same (no gas to buy). It's a Corgi die-cast and came with a Haynes ownership manual. Woo hoo!
Marc M

4/22/18, 11:17 AM
Anonymous said...

BTW, Brian Williams (Yes, THAT Brian Williams) flew one in WWll and was an ace.

4/25/18, 7:30 AM
Nelson said...

For my money, the P-38 is superior to the Mustang. It could move faster than the P-51, and it was used as a high subsonic speed testbed prior to the X-1. It also provided better weapon accurace, since all of the guns could be installed in the nose; if the target was straight ahead, you would hit it. They eventually resolved the compression dive issue they had, as well as engine fire issues, and it became a truly remarkable plane.

But the Mustang is definitely a close second, and the Thud is surely worthy of respect as a tough and capable bird.

4/27/18, 2:16 AM

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