North American P51 "Mustang".................................    ....Specifications

This P51D "SQUEEZIE" Served with the 319th Fighter Squadron, 325th Fighter Group, 15th US Army Air Force in Vincenzo, Italy durring 1945. A P51 drop tanked like this had a range of over 2000 miles.

The North American P-51 "Mustang" was quite a remarkable aircraft born in quite remarkable circumstances. The North American NA73X prototype flew for the first time in September 1940 as a private venture in response to an order for 320 aircraft by the British of March 1940. North American had never built such an aircraft before. The closest had been the Harvard Trainer which was already being supplied to the RAF. Yet within the space of 6 months North American was able to supply a fighter aircraft from drawing board to flying prototype at a time when the only other aviable US fighter product, the Curtiss P-40 Tomahawk was in very short supply.The British stipulated that the Allison V1710 engine be used and that armament was to be the 303 Browning machine gun, a unit cost of no more than $40,000 and the first delivery was to be in January 1941.

The resulting aircraft had a wing of laminar flow design for high lift and a semi-monocoque fuselage constructed entirely of aluminum in order to save weight. The design also incorperated a new radiator design  in which heated air exited the radiator as a slight amount of jet thrust.