Historic Aircraft Story: The P-51 Mustang

Home » News » General Aviation News » Historic Aircraft Story: The P-51 Mustang

AeroExpo UK Historic Aircraft Story The P-51 Mustang

Alongside the British Spitfire and the German ME109, the American P-51 Mustang is one of the most iconic aircraft to come out of WWII. As you well know, every plane has its story, but they aren’t always what you might expect — and the same can be said for the origin of the mighty Mustang…

The P-51’s origin can be traced right back to the rejection of one idea that was replaced with another. The British Aircraft Purchasing Commission had established talks with North American in 1940 to ask them if they could build P40s under licence from Curtiss. In response, North America proposed something different: they wanted to produce an entirely new aircraft — The P-51 (nicknamed the Mustang!) Here’s the story…

North America set about its task in swift time and, using experimental data obtained from the US National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics or ‘NACA’ (which in 1958 became NASA), the yachieved a giant leap in performance from the P40 by using a newly designed laminar wing profile. This moved the maximum thickness of the wing further aft from the leading edge and used nearly as much camber on the bottom of the wing as on the top. This feature reduced turbulent air flow across the wing, resulting in reduced drag thereby increasing speed and range.

The Mustang’s aft-mounted radiator design was also something to behold for not only did it decrease fuselage drag, it also utilised the heated air exiting the radiator as a form of jet propulsion to give it an extra bit of thrust called the ‘Meredith Effect’ (named after British engineer F.W. Meredith, who worked at the Defence Research Establishment at Farnborough, during the 1930s).

Share this news article

Leave a Comment

You must be logged in to post a comment.

CATEGORIES

ARCHIVES

Sign up to AvPay's Aircraft for Sale Newsletter
Pula - Aviation Services
ASG - Aircraft Servicing
AOM Digital Marketing Agency