Word: 51b
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...51B Mustang turned into him and the Nazi peeled off into a diving turn. Ten thousand feet farther down the Mustang pilot nailed his man with a long close-in burst. First the FW's wheels fell out, then the plane exploded and its pieces tumbled earthward. Second Lieut. WauKau Kong, pilot of "Chinaman's Chance" and one of the U.S. Fighter Command's hottest aero-bats, had made his first kill...
Slashing air combat over savagely defended aircraft plants deep in Germany made a spectacular formal debut last week for the newest and hottest U.S. Army fighter: the P-51B Mustang. Airmen wagged their heads and wondered whether, at long last, this was it-the single-seater that had everything...
...Everything," for a fighter plane, covers a lot of ground. But on its battle performance the P-51B was clearly fast, rugged and maneuverable enough to tackle any foe at any altitude. Top speed is well over 400 m.p.h., ceiling above 40,000 ft. The Mustang packs plenty of armament (one earlier version carried four 20-mm. cannon), and within a limited radius can lug two 500-lb. bombs against ground targets...
...lovely lines and the aerodynamic efficiency of its sharp-edged "laminar flow" wing. More than a year ago they tried stepping the plane up with a more powerful engine, and passed the tip on to the U.S. Air Forces, which took up the same experiment. The present P-51B is ail-American except for the design of its 1,500-h.p. Packard-built Rolls-Royce Merlin engine (same type used in the latest Spitfires). It chews the air with a four-bladed propeller, has a two-speed, two-stage supercharger which gives it speed and climb upstairs and down...
Fighters escorted the bombers all the way in and back. The escort operated in waves: first, P-38 Lightnings, then P47 Thunderbolts. Finally, long-range P-51B Mustangs (see p. 61) came in for the final approach and run over the targets...