pee51

[john9001]

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 ]

[bloom25]

It's a German designed, American built, and British powered fighter-bomber.  

[juzz]

Yeah, it was designed by Nord Amerikanische Luftfahrt GmbH...  

[funkedup]

Actually, Kurt Tank designed the Mustang.

[Animal]

And its a common fact that Kurt Tank was a homosexual..

[AKSWulfe]

Originally posted by Animal:
And its a common fact that Kurt Tank was a homosexual..

Which heavily influenced today's virtual LuftWaffe....
   
-SW

[Tac]

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*

[Hobodog]

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.

[elstevie]

MUSTANG? er-um thought that was a ford POS?muahahaaaaaaaa  

[minus]

come  tell my in to my eye about that lw homo stuff and u will go home with broken nose

u  realy suxx  sometime

[Seeker]

Minus, You've just made the most stupid post I've yet to see here.

How gay.

[Bluedog]

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

[juzz]

Kurt Tank also designed the P-38! Evidence below!

 

[streakeagle]

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   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.

[becker]

I think 'German design' reference is to head of design team being from Germany and German trained engineer.