The British Air Purchasing Commission talked to North American Aviation about building P-40s for them.
Dutch Kindlebergr and Edgar Schmued's design team said, we've got a better idea, and showed them some plans for the P-51, which the USAAC had shown little interest in. The BAPC said to go ahead.
And the NA-73X rolled out for flight testing 117 days later...as soon as they got an Allison supercharged engine to install in it. (Aero engines were in very short supply at the time.)
It turned out pretty well, as a low-level fighter it could outrun just about everyone else at the time, and it had very good range.
The P-51B adopted the Merlin engine, made under license by Packard, and the Mustang became an outstanding high-altitude fighter. A ground attack version using the Allison V-1710 became the A-36 Apache, which served well in the Mediterranean and CBI theaters.
built to British spec but surprisingly here used for ground attack which was not the role it was built to fulfil! Lovely to have a commentator who let the sound of the merlin set the scene and take a starring role.... you can hear a commentator any day. I have a book published 1942 which gives the information...."NA-73 ... manufacturers name Apache... RAF name Mustang" one to guess on my blog here.. http://tinyurl.com/6fk5lp
thinking more about it, it might not be a Merlin, might be the Allison.... which might explain the change of role.... didn't reach it's spec until reworked with the Merlin. Still sounds glorious though.
6 comments:
If memory serves, the initial design/specification for what would become the P-51 was British, correct?
Sort of, not really, no.
The British Air Purchasing Commission talked to North American Aviation about building P-40s for them.
Dutch Kindlebergr and Edgar Schmued's design team said, we've got a better idea, and showed them some plans for the P-51, which the USAAC had shown little interest in. The BAPC said to go ahead.
And the NA-73X rolled out for flight testing 117 days later...as soon as they got an Allison supercharged engine to install in it. (Aero engines were in very short supply at the time.)
It turned out pretty well, as a low-level fighter it could outrun just about everyone else at the time, and it had very good range.
The P-51B adopted the Merlin engine, made under license by Packard, and the Mustang became an outstanding high-altitude fighter. A ground attack version using the Allison V-1710 became the A-36 Apache, which served well in the Mediterranean and CBI theaters.
built to British spec but surprisingly here used for ground attack which was not the role it was built to fulfil!
Lovely to have a commentator who let the sound of the merlin set the scene and take a starring role.... you can hear a commentator any day. I have a book published 1942 which gives the information...."NA-73 ... manufacturers name Apache... RAF name Mustang"
one to guess on my blog here..
http://tinyurl.com/6fk5lp
thinking more about it, it might not be a Merlin, might be the Allison.... which might explain the change of role.... didn't reach it's spec until reworked with the Merlin.
Still sounds glorious though.
Me Dad knows a man who was involved in getting the first ones that were brought over, ready and into the air.
He was asked by Frank Whittle to join an as then top secret project, but declined in favour of staying with the P-51s.
You don't need to be fast to be an "Army cooperation aircraft" Like the A-10 vs. the F-15.
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