Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Aces High General Discussion => Topic started by: john9001 on August 20, 2001, 12:04:00 AM
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the p51 was first used in combat by the british and they named it the 'mustang" and they also changed the eng,....sooo is this a british plane or a yank plane? or a yank built british plane or a yank built-british mod-flown by both plane, or a a a...damm now i'm cornfused
[ 08-20-2001: Message edited by: john9001 ]
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It's a German designed, American built, and British powered fighter-bomber. :D
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Yeah, it was designed by Nord Amerikanische Luftfahrt GmbH... :rolleyes:
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Actually, Kurt Tank designed the Mustang.
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And its a common fact that Kurt Tank was a homosexual..
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Originally posted by Animal:
And its a common fact that Kurt Tank was a homosexual..
Which heavily influenced today's virtual LuftWaffe....
(http://www.contrabandent.com/pez/cwm/cwm/eek2.gif)
-SW
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bah, the 38 and Jug pilots were already beating the crap outta the luftwaffe, the ponyboys arrived only with range and numbers on their side *grin*
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All luft waffle are homosexuals i mean um well look at there pants and then there incredibly LARGE icicle..........hanging off there incredibly miniscule members.
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:D MUSTANG? er-um thought that was a ford POS?muahahaaaaaaaa :D
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come tell my in to my eye about that lw homo stuff and u will go home with broken nose
u realy suxx sometime
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Minus, You've just made the most stupid post I've yet to see here.
How gay.
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The P51 was designed and built by North American, to British specifications, for the RAF. They flew it and discovered that the Allison engine was by far the Mustang's worste drawback. It was suggested that the Mustang airframe, combined with RR's Merlin engine would be a superb aircraft.....turns out they were right.
It's high altitude performance, sweet handling and range made it an obvious choice as a bomber escort, something the 8th AF desperately needed.
So, though undoubtably designed for the Brits, the Mustang can only be called an American fighter, powered by a Brit engine, and flown, mostly, by Americans ( though by no means exclusively).
A tricky question really, but I cant see any justification for calling the P51 Mustang anything but American.
<S> Blue
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Kurt Tank also designed the P-38! Evidence below!
(http://users.visi.net/~djohnson/fw/flit3.jpg)
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It is actually a hotly debated topic over who built the first Mustang with a Merlin. Both the Brits and Americans experimented with it independently... I think testing took place within a month or two of each other before they reported the results to each other. At the time nobody argued, both teams got together (I believe the Americans flew to Britain to continue testing of the British prototype) and came up with the best installation possible given both their experiences.
Personally, I would have liked to have seen an Allison with a decent supercharger since that was its only real drawback. It actually had a much cleaner installation for a comparable amount of power. Down low (below 15000 feet) P-51A's were awesome: imagine a P-40 with good aerodynamics :p Give an Allison the ability to keep its power up to 30,000 feet and maybe it would be as or more legendary than the Merlin.
I wonder why Americans couldn't design a decent supercharged watercooled inline engine? The American supercharged aircooled radial engines were awesome.
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I think 'German design' reference is to head of design team being from Germany and German trained engineer.
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The "German designed" is because the head engineer at North American was a German immigrant.
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Jeeze... this wives tale still lives??
Edgar Schmued designed some of the internal systems of the P51 prototypes.. landing gear; hydrlics, control cable routings, etc. He did NOT design the plane, and most importantly, did not desgin the airfoils or any other external skin component of the aircraft... or any of those parts that in fact made the Mustang such an effective airframe in it's role as an Air Superiority Fighter.
Following the outbreak of war in Europe, the British Purchasing Commission, headed by Sir Henry Self, was posted to New York to determine if American combat aircraft could be of any use to the Royal Air Force. The Bell P-39 Airacobra and the Curtiss P-40 Warhawk were ordered in substantial numbers, even though they were not up to the performance standards of the latest British and German fighters.
One of the corporations that Self had contacted had been the North American Aviation corporation. North American had already been building NA-16 trainers, and the British ordered a number of them for the RAF as the Harvard. In April of 1940, the manager of NAA James H. "Dutch" Kindelberger was summoned by the British Air Purchasing Commision and asked to manufacture the Curtiss Hawk 87 (P-40D) under license for the RAF.
Kindelberger, who was an excellent businessman as well as aeronautical engineer, responded that NAA could do that if it were really required, but countered that he and his company could build a better fighter than the P-40 and that they could design a real fighter in the same time that it would take to put the P-40 into production. Although Kindelberger had no experience with fighters, he collaborated with his friend and colleague J. Leland Atwood to formulate an outline for a fighter project as early as summer 1939. A project team was formed at North American, made up of such people as Raymond H. Rice, Edgar Schmued, Larry Waite and E. H. Horkey. A sort of urban legend has grown up about Edgar Schmued, which claims that he had once worked for Willy Messerschmitt and that the Mustang was heavily influenced by the Bf 109. [/i]
The British commission felt that they could take Kindelberger at his word, and on April 10, 1940 they accepted his proposal on the condition that the first prototype be ready in 120 days. The design was assigned the company project name of Model NA-73.
At that time, the USAAC reserved for itself the right to block any foreign aircraft sales that it regarded as not in the Army's interest, for whatever reason. On May 4, 1940, the US Army reluctantly agreed not to block the British sale, but they added a condition. Two examples of the initial NA-73 lot for Britain were to be transferred to the USAAC for testing free of charge.
Full Story Here. (http://www.hotel.wineasy.se/ipms/stuff_eng_p51early.htm)
You'll discover that the "British Designed" myth is just that.. a myth... NAA did the design work. The Brits just wanted a fighter.
FYI. :)
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With all due respect to the Americans here (and this is not a bash at you guys) but the Alison engine was a pile of steaming doggy poop. It actually killed a lot of inexperienced pilots for the simple reason that you can't push the throttle right forward. If you totally opened the throttle with the Alison the engine blew up. The Merlin and sabre engines (that are in the spits, tiffys, temps, furies and some warhawks had little wire restrainers to stop the pilot from fully opening up the throttle. The Merlin and sabre engines both had the ability to fully open up the throttle or "punch through" the little wire restrainers in emergency situations.
You do it with an Alison and the pots with will go up and fly straight through the top of the cowling and after being launched about 200ft into the air eventually drop to the ground.
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Also as a footnote, the 'Merlin' engine in the mustang B/C and D was a Rolls Royce licensed copy made by Packard in the USA.
So techinically it isnt a brit engine, but a brit designed one - and a damned good one too.
[ 08-22-2001: Message edited by: Spatula ]
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I also read somewhere that the Packard built version of the Merlin engine, on average, produced more horsepower than the Rolls built engines.
:p No kidding
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I read an article somewhere that said, on average, the American engineers had far better teeth than their British counterparts.
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Not that you'd know a good set o teeth though hblair :)
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Never heard of British planes having wires on the throttle - only US ones with water injection.