On Oct 25, 2014, at 10:05 AM, Dave Moore wrote: > >>> The best American fighter plane of the war was built for the British and designed by a German who had worked for Willie Messerschmitt. North American Aviation assigned German-born Edgar Schmued to build it to British specifications. The prototype flew in October 1940 and production copies were delivered to the RAF in 1941. At the time, the Army Air Force had little interest in it, buying only two planes for test purposes. Its underpowered Allison engine made it unsuitable for high altitude flying, the British used it as a low level tactical fighter. Lt. Col. Thomas Hitchcock an American air attache in London wrote a memo to Washington to pass on the idea of Lt. Col. Campbell-Orde of the Air Fighting Development Unit that the Mustang be made into a high altitude fighter by cross breeding it with the Merlin 61 engine made by Rolls Royce (later by Packard under license). Suddenly the USAAF became interested and bought 2,200 of the British-American hybrid in late 1942. > > Schmued and his engineers added an 85 gallon fuel tank behind the armor plate aft ofthe pilot to make a long-legged fighter out of it. Introduced in December 1943, the planes carried a 75 gallon drop tank under each wing giving enough fuel to reach Berlin. Later, they used108 gallon drop tanks which gave them range to reach Poland. That wasaround trip of 1.700 miles at speeds up to 440 MPH at altitude up to 40,000 feet. In its first three months of service it had three times the kills of the heavy, short-legged P-47 Thunderbolt and twice as many as the P-38 Lightning. > > Source: Masters of the Air by Donald Miller >>> >>> Don’t miss the “Balbo”... >>> >>> Eye Candy! Aw-sum air show player.vimeo/video/93587997
Posted on: Sun, 26 Oct 2014 16:32:14 +0000
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