P1 Aircraft - At that point, the engine lost power again, and with the additional drag of the extended landing gear, Levy was beyond gliding distance from the runway. Also, he heard the whistling sound that the Mustang's gun ports make when the wing is at high angles of attack, so Levy knew that the laminar-flow wing was nearing an aerodynamic stall.
About 13,300 Merlin-powered Mustangs were produced in the United States. Although production contracts were canceled at war's end, the P-51 remained in service with the Air Force for several years thereafter. P-51s, some taken out of "mothballs," were used for ground-attack missions early in the Korean War (1950-53).
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Mustangs were also used by Nationalist forces in the Chinese Civil War and by Israel in the 1956 Sinai invasion. P-51s continued to serve in less-developed countries into the 1960s and last saw combat in Salvadoran hands during the 1969 Soccer War with Honduras.
P-51, also called Mustang, a single-seat, single-engine 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 P-51 is widely regarded as the finest all-around piston-engined fighter of World War II to be produced in significant numbers.
"If you can keep the airplane under control until touchdown, you're in a far better situation than if you lose control somewhere in the sky," he said. "If you get a wing drop or a spin, that's out of your control."
Levy said he followed legendary pilot R.A. "Bob" Hoover's advice to fly the airplane "as far into the crash as possible." The runway was so close that Levy felt he could almost touch it. But it may as well have been thousands of miles away because the airplane couldn't possibly get there without engine power.
Attempting to stretch a glide could be fatal, and it would require overflying a busy highway. Levy bellied the stricken airplane into a farm field, and it slid to an abrupt stop in about 100 yards.
The impact was so forceful that the canopy slammed forward, hitting the back of his head as the plexiglass was thrown clear of the airplane. Levy wasn't seriously injured, and he made a radio call saying that he was OK before he shut down the electrical power and stepped out of the damaged aircraft.
The engine continued to cut in and out, and even when it was running, it wasn't making full power. The airplane descended to about 500 feet above the ground on a tight left downwind, and air traffic controllers shouted on the radio to Levy warning him that his landing gear was still up.
Levy, an airline captain and veteran airshow pilot, selected a field, turned towards it, and began preparing for an off-field landing. He rolled back the P-51's sliding canopy, and then the Merlin engine roared back to life.
He was only a couple of miles from the airport. Perhaps the engine would keep running long enough for him to get there. Moments after the first interruption, Levy's engine quit again, and this time the power loss lasted several seconds.
He pulled up and out of the formation, declared an emergency, and tried to climb. But at 190 mph, the 7,000-pound fighter didn't have much surplus energy. Its best glide speed is 150 mph. 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 round-the-clock bombardment. Although fewer in number, the P-51 could penetrate deeper into German airspace than the other U.S.
fighters and was better in air-to-air combat; it thus played a disproportionately large role in the defeat of the Luftwaffe.
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