This aircraft, P-51B-15-NA "Mustang" 42-106945 coded E9*V, was flown by Maj. Roswell Freedman and assigned to the 376th Fighter Squadron of the 361st Fighter Group ("Yellowjackets"). Not a lot of info on him out there but I did find a partial list of his awards.
Air Medal with 13 oak leaf clusters (2 silver, 3 bronze)
Air Medal with 4 oak leaf clusters
Distinguished Flying Cross
Korean Service Medal
Purple Heart
World War II Victory Medal
European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal with 3 bronze stars
He earned that Purple Heart on a strafing mission in WWII. He recovered and went back to flying again.
The airplane at some point was called "SMOKEY" but I haven't found an image of the nose art and all the photos of the airplane I've seen do not have it on the nose anywhere.
I used some of what I learned on IV-C and "Janie Girl" to make this one a lot better than it was even though I've already worked on it some for AH3. Actually, in some ways this skin was a fork in the road for me on how to make better metal effects. I decided to go the other direction and that proved to be the right move--though it took a long time for me to circle back around to that realization. I didn't reverse course so the metal effects are still different than those skins on the other fork, but the lessons learned were applicable.
