War Bird – IOTW Report

War Bird

Wednesday, 13 October 2021, 23:45 MJA Uncategorized 23

North American P-51D Mustang starting its engine, taxi to the takeoff, taking off and doing a great display flight. Awesome loud engine sounds in 4K UHD without any announcer or commentator.
h/t NAAC

23 Comments on War Bird

  3. the P-51 was a helluva war bird, outrunning the ME-109’s & the FW-190’s in the European Theater of WWII

    (although the higher octanes of the US fuel, compared to the synthetics the Germans were running had a bit to do w/ it)

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  5. As a kid (mid-1980s) this and the Corsair were my favorite airplanes, used to goto airshows every year (EAA) and drool over them. At the time a completely restored P-51D would set you back around $600K. I would beg my dad to somehow find the money to buy one. LOL, well it wouldn’t have been that bad of an investment, they can fetch up to $3 to $4 million today, nevermind the hundreds of thousands (probably millions) required to keep it in shape and stored all these years.

    There are only about 175 of them still flying today, 150 in the US.

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  7. My eyes were drawn by that classic, red Beech Staggerwing he taxied by. Now that everybody is drawing straws over the P-51, I’ll gladly take the Staggerwing as a consolation prize.

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  9. A Plumber friend of mine has a large black & white poster labelled P-51 Mustang on his office wall. Great guy, but plumber!

    I told him years ago, “Nice poster but that is a P-47, see the huge Radial engine…”

    He insisted I was wrong until we both looked it up on the GOOGLE thingy. I have always had a soft spot for the P-47 “JUG”

    My next question to him was, “John, you are allergic to peanuts, so how can you be a plumber?”

    He told me to Fuck Off but he still has the picture of the “JUG” on the wall years later.

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  10. I’m a retired plumber.
    My Dad was a sheet metal guy on P-47s during the war.

    “Great guy, but plumber!”
    I know we’re supposed to be dumb, but what’s up widdat?
    Should I be offended?

    izlamo delenda est …

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  11. Yeah, what’s wrong with Plumbers? Without them, you’d be knee deep in human waste and fetching water from the river or a well.

    Your health would be at much more risk.

    Modern civilization is only possible because of what they do..

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  12. ecp, I agree with both of yall. For warbirds the Corsair and Mustang have always been my favorite since a kid. Stood behind a Corsair during startup once….amazing stuff.
    Cherrrybark, the Beech Staggerwing is my favorite civilian plane along with the Lockheed Electra. That Staggerwing is just a beautiful work or art.

    If you’re a warbird fan, check out Kermit Weeks. Here is a video where he goes through the startup process with a gopro and flying the P-51C
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4z1Z-WEZZGM
    Man I went down a rabbit hole. Here is a guy at an airshow that had put his Mustang down in a field and he describes with video what is going on.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnODYKx5ics

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  13. Well. I’ll be over here with P-40 and F4F. We were holding the line when P-51 was still on the drawing board. And P-51 wasn’t such a big deal until he switched from the Allison to the Merlin engine. Somehow, I managed to make those twin Allisons work for me. Just sayin’.

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  14. Agreed P-38….The Merlin did wake up the P-51. The P-38 was exceptional as well and it is in my top 5 for sure. I’ve heard stories that pilots could twist the booms if they really pushed them in turns. I’ve even heard of using the flaps to tighten a turn.
    So were you a P-38 pilot?

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  15. No, JP, I’m just a big fan of that old twin fan bird, or “Gabelschwanzteufel”, as the German pilots called it…“Fork-tailed devil”…I’m sure the Japs had a rueful nickname for it, too.

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  18. My dad was a young engineer at Lockheed working on the P38 in WW2. When Jack Erickson was restoring a pair of them (actually rebuilding them from the ground up) we visited his hangar to watch the process. Dad was ecstatic. One of those beauties was lost in an accident, but the other one is still flying and can be seen at the Erickson Aircraft Collection in Madras, Oregon. For a discussion on the Allison v. the Merlin in the P38, see this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJPGFcXRZZI
    Spoiler: the P38 had turbochargers, so the Merlin with a 2 stage supercharger would have had no advantage.

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  21. TonyR, that’s true about the turbos on the P-38. I’m not sure how many are left, but I think it is only a handful unfortunately. It is an awesome plane and that is cool your dad was an engineer. I’m structural engineer in the aerospace industry for 20 yrs and love it. At least till this week when I got my vax mandate email.

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