P-51 Mustang – a World War 2 Fighter Plane

P51 Mustang. Photo Source: License Attribution Noncommercial No Derivative Works Some rights reserved by Flicktone on flickr.com

By: Joe Lam, Journalist

P-51 Mustang is a single-seat, single-pilot medium-size propeller fighter plane created by North American Aviation co. It was used in World War 2 and was 32′ long, 37’0” wide, and the weight about 12,100 lbs. It is created from a proposal sent to the British Aircraft Purchasing Commission from J.H. “Dutch” Kindelbreger, the chief designer from the North American co. It was asking them to design an original fighter, rather than building existing fighter planes, (such as the P-40 Curtiss), under permission. The Brits agreed and soon North American came up with a design of a plane that had a low-trim mono-wing, an air-cooled Allisons , (not turbo-charged, unlike other fighters), aircraft engine, 4/6 0.30 caliber Browning machine guns, and a larger-than-normal fuel tank. Those designs, along with North American’s fine-quality workmanship and materials, created a fighter plane that is known to the British as the Mustang.

Related Stories:

http://worldwar2headquarters.com/HTML/aircraft/americanAircraft/mustang.html

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/forget-p-51-mustang-or-zero-was-best-fighter-plane-during-world-war-ii-41382

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_P-51_Mustang