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This is the incredible story of when a p51 pilot went against orders to take down an enemy aircraft

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Music Source
'There Was A Time'. 'Juggernaut' 'Hymn to the Dawn' by Scott Buckley – released under CCBY 4.0. www.scottbuckley.com.au

Background history on the P51 Mustang

P51, also called Mustang, a singleseat, singleengine fighter aircraft originally designed and produced by North American Aviation for the British Royal Air Force (RAF) and later adopted by the U.S. Army Air Forces (USAAF). The P51 is widely regarded as the finest allaround pistonengined fighter of World War II to be produced in significant numbers.

The P51 originated with an April 1940 proposal to the British Aircraft Purchasing Commission by the chief designer of North American Aviation, J.H. (“Dutch”) Kindelberger, to design a fighter from the ground up rather than produce another fighter, the Curtiss P40, under license. The result was a trim lowwing monoplane powered by a liquidcooled inline Allison engine. Other fighters powered by nonturbosupercharged Allisons, notably the P40 and P39, had shown mediocre performance, and the U.S. War Department had reserved turbosupercharger production for fourengined bombers (the P38 Lightning being the only exception at that point). Nevertheless, by using experimental data obtained from the U.S. National Advisory Committee on Aviation, Kindelberger’s team achieved a giant leap in performance. Their design, dubbed Mustang by the British, had a lowdrag laminarflow wing and an efficient lowdrag engine cooling system that gave it exceptional speed and range. It had a maximum speed of about 390 miles (630 km) per hour and a combat range of roughly 750 miles (1,200 km). The use of external drop tanks nearly doubled its operational range to 1,375 miles (2,200 km). The only drawback was the Allison’s lack of an efficient highaltitude supercharger, which restricted the plane to lowaltitude operations below 15,000 feet (4,600 metres). The Mustang first flew in October 1940, entered production in May 1941, and began combat operations with the RAF in April 1942. Some 1,579 Allisonpowered Mustangs were produced. They were typically equipped with two .50calibre nosemounted and four .30calibre wingmounted machine guns, although one model had four 20mm cannons and another (the A36A) was a divebomber for the USAAF. They served as lowaltitude fighters and as longrange photoreconnaissance aircraft under the designation F6, mostly with the RAF.

In the meantime, the British had experimented with Mustangs fitted with the powerful RollsRoyce Merlin engine, and they discovered that the Merlin’s efficient mechanical supercharger gave the fighter outstanding highaltitude performance. North American quickly followed suit. The Merlin was already being produced under license in the United States by the Packard Motor Company, and by the summer of 1943 Packard Merlinpowered P51s were coming off North American’s assembly line. Merlinpowered P51s, equipped with jettisonable drop tanks, had an operational range of more than 1,600 miles (2,500 km), and they mounted their first longrange bomber escort missions over Germany in midDecember 1943. They quickly established ascendancy over Germany’s premier fighters, the Me 109 and the Fw 190. The P51’s superiority was particularly evident above 20,000 feet (6,000 metres). By March 1944, P51s were available in quantity and, in combination with drop tankequipped P47 Thunderbolts and P38s, had taken the Luftwaffe’s measure in the daylight skies over Germany.

The crippling losses which the U.S. bombers had previously suffered were thereafter drastically reduced: in October 1943 as many as 9.1 percent of the Eighth Air Force bomber sorties credited with attacking their targets had failed to return, and a further 45.6 percent had been damaged. In February 1944 the corresponding figures fell to 3.5 percent and 29.9 percent. From that point, Germany was effectively under roundtheclock bombardment. Though fewer in number, the P51 could penetrate deeper into German airspace than the other U.S. fighters and was better in airtoair combat; it thus played a disproportionately large role in the defeat of the Luftwaffe.


https://www.britannica.com/technology...

P51 pilot Refuses orders and Spares his Enemy