The P-51 Mustang

     The most highly regarded American fighter of World War II, the Mustang owed both its very existence and its superb power plant to the British.

     In 1938, the Royal Air Force, convinced a war with Germany was inevitable and that British industry would not be able to supply the quantities needed by a greatly expanded Fighter Command, sent a team of engineers to the U.S. to check out what the Americans might have to offer. After talking to industry officials on the East coast, they caught a train to California, liked what they saw, and ended up placing an order with Lockheed, in Burbank, for some 200 Hudson bombers. They also contacted "Dutch" Kindelberger, who headed a start-up company in Los Angeles called North American. (Americans with German last names were often nicknamed "Dutch" in those days – if they were liked; if not, it was more like "Krauthead", "Heine", or a few other choice monikers.)

     Kindelberger had designed a trainer, the AT-6, which he called the Texan, but was having a hard time selling. The Brits placed an order for 200 Texans, but renamed it the Harvard (obviously they couldn't deal with the cowboy image). This kept the company out of bankruptcy and also attracted the U.S. Army Air Corps to it, which later ordered thousands of Texans.

     Two years later, in desperate need of fighters, the RAF placed a huge order with Curtiss (in Buffalo, New York) for P-40s. Curtiss could not deliver in the desired numbers though, so the Brits, impressed with their Harvards, asked Kindelberger in May 1940 if he'd build P-40s under license. Not wanting to build someone else's airplane, he grabbed his two top designers, Schmued (a recent immigrant from Bavaria) and Rice and worked through the night, coming up with a design by the morning to air mail to the British. He promised to roll out the first prototype within 120 days – even in those days, this was an unheard of time frame from initial design to a flying prototype.

     The RAF ordered 620 of them, a large order for a company that had never built a fighter before. Apache was the initial name, but the Brits suggested Mustang, based on a big-band era song that had been making the rounds in the US and Britain. The Mustang proved to be a major breakthrough in the design and performance of fighter aircraft, with a revolutionary wing design and greatly reduced drag in the cockpit and fuselage. It outclassed the P-40 immediately and was even faster than the Spitfire.

   The Mustang only began arriving in England in large numbers in late 1941. The Spitfire was superior to the early Mustang at higher altitudes, so the RAF used the Mustang for reconnaissance and ground support. North American kept experimenting, however, including trying a British-built Rolls-Royce engine in place of the Detroit-built Allison. This single innovation vastly improved the Mustang's performance at higher altitude, prompted the U.S. Army Air Force to begin ordering the aircraft in large quantities, and was to have a major impact on Allied air supremacy over Germany.

     The RAF continued to use the Mustang for interdiction raids into German-occupied France and in low-altitude fighter interception raids against FW 190s who in mid-1942 began carrying out raids against British coastal ports, coming in at low altitude, skimming over the North Sea waves.

     The USAAF in the meantime, starting in 1943, began purchasing the Mustang in larger numbers, and first used it in Sicily in July 1943, as a dive bomber, and in China and Burma, for ground support. It was only in December 1943 that the USAAF first introduced the P-51 over northern Europe. In the summer of 1943, while the British continued night bombing of Germany, the U.S. had begun building up its heavy bomber forces in Europe at a faster rate and had begun dispatching greater numbers of B-17s and B-24s against targets inside Germany. However, whenever they flew beyond the range of their Spitfire or P-47 escorts, the bombers risked being mauled by Luftwaffe fighters. Large numbers of bombers were lost over Kiel, Münster, and Regensburg that year. After a disastrous raid on Schweinfurt in October, where Luftwaffe air superiority over Germany was clearly demonstrated, the USAAF made no more deep penetrations into Germany in clear weather for nearly the remainder of the year.

     During the lull, however, the U.S. began sending all the P-51s it could muster to England, equipping the fighters with 75 gallon drop tanks, for their newly assigned role as long-range escort fighter in attacks planned for 1944. In mid-December, 1943, Mustangs began the escort of bombers to targets in the Reich itself. No other fighter aircraft had the range to reach all corners of Germany at the high altitudes the bombers flew. On December 16th, a USAAF Mustang scored its first aerial victory, over a Messerschmidt 110, an incident that would be repeated hundreds of times in the next few months as Mustangs, now appearing in large numbers, could protect the bombers all the way to target and back. The hunters, the rocket firing Messerschmidt 110s and Junkers 88s, became the hunted.

     In early February 1944, in an effort to destroy the German aircraft industry, more than 1,000 heavy bombers, escorted by hundreds of fighters, struck at 12 aircraft plants across the Reich. This was followed during the week of February 20th, called "The Big Week", when over 4,000 aircraft were dispatched over Germany in an effort to draw out the Luftwaffe. Six hundred German aircraft were destroyed in vicious air battles, a loss from which the Luftwaffe never recovered.

     The P-51 proved its capabilities as a long-range, high-altitude escort fighter throughout 1944 and 1945. Mustangs scored heavily over German interceptors and by war's end had destroyed nearly 5,000 enemy aircraft in the air, more than any other fighter in Europe. The P-51D, the version primarily used in 1944 and 1945, was armed with six Browning .50-calibre machine guns. Its Rolls Royce engine (mainly produced by Packard in Detroit under license) had 1450 horsepower, providing a speed of 435 mph, faster than the Focke Wulf, Zero, and Spitfire.

     The Mustang also made its mark in Asia, flying from mid-1943 against the Japanese in China and Burma, and from late 1944 in the Philippines. The P-51 was the first fighter to escort B-29s over Japan after the capture of Iwo Jima in early 1945.