Warbird Information Exchange

Hello, this is my first post on this forum.

I've heard talk a while back that someone was building or was going to build P-51s to factory spec from scratch, just the way any other modern airplane is built. This made me think, would this be possible? Did the plans and blueprints survive all these years, and could someone use these plans to build a new Mustang? It would not have the history obviously of the Mustangs in existence today, but it would still be a factory fresh airplane, just as they were all those years ago when they were sent to combat. Is it simply a matter of gathering all the equipment, machines, people, knowledge and money to start building these airplanes again?

Just wondering if anyone knows anything about any of this.

Welcome to the forum! If you look around a bit you will find lots of info on P-51's and the restoration of them. I would think that quite a few restorations are already incorporating this scratch built method under the pretence of a restoration. Of course a few original parts must be incorporated.

IIRC the late Gerry Beck did just that with this one:


Also, Flugwerks in Germany is building new mustang "kits". Check out there website at http://www.flugwerk.de/ and look at the "AP-51 Palomino" page.

Welcome to WIX.

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Taylor Stevenson

Thanks for the warm welcome! I learned about this forum at a stop on the EAA B-17 tour.

109- That picture rings a bell with me...the name El Dorado sounds very familiar, I think it is the airplane I remember hearing about, and I also remember the razorback earlier version.

Hopefully someone will get a D model going!

As has been stated already, numerous D-models (and TF-51s) currently flying are to all intents and purposes new-build, containing litle or nothing that ever came our of a North American plant in WWII

Welcome to the forum! Hope you'll enjoy it here.

I suggest you bang a few keywords into the forum search (near the top right) to explore some of the aspects.

Beyond the technical requirements you've touched on, history carries a price-tag advantage for collectibility with aircraft. Likewise supply and demand are geared - one reason Mustangs are the price they are (and why it varies as it does) is to do with the availability of the numbers there are, and on the other hand, the cachet for owning what is to most Americans the most famous (read 'only') fighter.

The Mustang is the most common front line warbird by far, with something like six times as many airframes and airworthy examples as the next most popular / available types.

Secondly for certification purposes (the criteria for which vary from country to country - but if you are thinking of a production line, you need to think internationally) a new build aircraft will often be certified differently to a restoration - so as groundpounder and Mike have touched on there are 'restorations' flying around that have one original part called the data plate...

That's why what you are asking about is basically what FlugWerke's Palomino (see above) is.

PS - calling the high back Mustang a 'razorback' will get you a free ticket to one of the loooong running WIX arguments. But don't worry, that's part of the fun! P-47 Thunderbolts are razorbacks, the equivalent Mustangs are 'early' or 'highback' (the issue is that Mustangs weren't called razorbacks during the war, apparently.). Tbolts do have a sharp ridge, the Mustang only a rounded top, so the distinction makes sense - to me anyway!

Have fun, stick around!

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James K

"Switch on the underwater landing lights"
Emilio Largo, Thunderball.

www.VintageAeroWriter.com

In the long run, if it weren't for North American built aircraft there wouldn't be much of a warbird movement would there?

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Don't make me go get my flying monkeys-

Why? You would probably just had another aircraft that would had fullfilled the same job and gathered (probably) the same mistic. It's a matter of fact that the biggest number of survivors by a single maker are North American (I'm thinking P51, T6, B25) but you seem to be framing it in a way it depended on NAA for the existence of the Warbird movement where it steems from a completly different set of motives (like the existence of a large group of vets and baby boomers with time/money in their hands and a will to reconnect with history. yeah, yeah, I'm oversimplifying but it's the humans and their motivations that made it happen. I argue that in the aftermath of WWII, given enough time (one generation perhaps) and with USA economical conditions, the Warbird Movement would always be inevitable.).


In another key, if the Germans would had won the war would you be saying "In the long run, if it weren't for Messerschmitt built aircraft there wouldn't be much of a warbird movement would there?"

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rreis

If you want pictures, see rreis@flickr

Much as it galls (given my allergy to P-51Ds) in a way the Inspector's got a point - on a technical level the scalability of part supply guarantees a self fulfilling numbers perpetuation* of just three types, but the proportionally large number of Spitfires, with their lack of commonality between examples (each mark of Spitfire is more different to the others in props, rads, wing structure, engines etc, etc.) argues that's a consequence not a cause.**

rreis is right too, I think.

What does bother me is that the over-representation by just two front line types (the B-25 and the P-51 - and the P-51D particularly) obscures the much greater variety and importance - and thus obscures the veterans - of all the other Allied medium bombers of W.W.II, and all the other fighters; many less adequate, but all we had when the enemy was advancing, not retreating.

(*I think that's the worst sentence I let escape for a while...)
(** Runner-up award.)

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James K

"Switch on the underwater landing lights"
Emilio Largo, Thunderball.

www.VintageAeroWriter.com

Something I'm thinking off, specially reminding of the wonderfull shots of Grumman that have been posted in WIX, didn't the attitude of the US Navy regarding their airplanes inhibited, for instance, a greater number of F4 Corsairs, Wildcats and so on in the scene? I remember seing lot's of surplus photos of USAAF types but don't recall rows of Wildcats or Corsairs piled up for scrap. Was the story with the Navy planes the same has in with their USAAF counterparts?

(and apologies if I'm derrailing the thread)

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rreis

If you want pictures, see rreis@flickr

Any artefact going into popular preservation usually has to go through a secondary use or benign storage stage after finishing its first job and before its appreciates / is appreciated. Lots of types were struck off and disposed of to streamline forces' use to one (preferred) type (B-26 Marauder, for instance) others passed onto secondary users in large numbers.

The relatively high numbers of P-51D Mustangs around today has (at least in part) more to do with their incredibly wide use by US supported secondary air forces in the 1950s (and Australian production delivering post-W.W.II) than it has to do with any wartime significance. (On the flipside Lend Lease requirements demanded aircraft were paid for or scrapped - which is in part what did for the Navy fighters, and nearly did for the Liberators, except the Indian Air Force 'unscrapped' an RAF dumps' worth and for which we must be greatful, most surviving B-24s being ex-IAF.)

Likewise the T-6 family, but in that case it was and remained also a very good trainer in the tailwheel era - and as it still is - training being (IMHO) the only original role in which W.W.II warbirds can still earn their keep doing their original job.

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James K

"Switch on the underwater landing lights"
Emilio Largo, Thunderball.

www.VintageAeroWriter.com

The Mustang has to be the easiest of all the WWII era airplanes to replicate and rebuild. Engine availibilty albeit limited is still there. I would love to see more "dullbacks" built up but it comes down to money...like everything else. Allisons are cheaper to own and operate, atleast for now, and the airframe is relatively simple. Money money money

jim

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www.spiritof44.com

While everyone was rushing to turn the weapons of war into frying pans and lawn furniture in the late 40's. The T-6, P-51, and B-25 were available in large enough numbers, and adaptible enough to survive the post war scrapping contests. Is there any Air Force or Navy outside the then Soviet sphere, that did't have T-6's on force for many, many years? The P-51 was in combat as recently as the late 60's, the B-25 served after the war as everything from a radar trainer to the squadron hack into the late 60's with Air Guard units.
Go to an airshow and what do you see on the show line and stactic displays? maybe a PT-22 or PT-19, several PT-13's (Stearman) and a solid row of T-6's and T-28's. Maybe a CORSAIR and a WILDCAT and a row of P-51's. How many show goers jump up and down and back slap each other when a STEARMAN flies past? Watch the same folks when the MUSTANGS fly past and crowds just love the sounds made by 10 or 12 R-1340's in a flight of T-6's.

If it weren't for a close friend of mine and the company he worked for back in the mid 50's called SIS-Q AIR there wouldn't be ANY F7F TIGERCATS left. So by fate or fortune, again if it weren't for the ruggedness, flexability and adaptability of the N.A. line, the pickings would be pretty slim in the warbird community.
Jim, I understand that a Mr. Rousch in Michigan is manufacturing new heads and blocks for MERLINS, and I'm sorry I helped torture so many in the late 60's in boat racing, but they were cheap as dirt and make wonderful power to weight.

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Don't make me go get my flying monkeys-

Indeed, on the US airshow scene, "medium bomber" equals "B-25" and of course "B-25" equals "Doolittle"; thus an entire category of warplane gets reduced to one propaganda raid, leaving the crowd with absolutely no sense of the diversity or importance of tactical airpower. Fighters fare a little better since it is a pretty poor show, warbird-wise, that has no non-P-51 fighters to talk about. Although given the praise heaped on the 51 by airshow announcers, the crowd must wonder why the Allies bothered building any other types.

Ah, well -- the Lindsay Lohan and Lady Gaga of the warbird world -- they may get an outsize share of attention, but they do have some redeeming merits.

August

At least here in the U.S. the average 'Joe Lunchbox' doesn't go to an airshow to be dipped in historical fine points, they go because it's a day in the sun, drinking beers and eating cold chicken and potato chip fragments and not watching 'Samecar racing'. I've watched people lay down and nap while Duane Cole, Bob Hoover, Bob Herindeen, Jim Franklin, and Sean Tucker (and myrad others)put on amazing displays of aircraft control and precision because 'it's boring, nothin happens' (like a fatality to brighten up your day?). These are the same ones who spring to attention and back slap each other and giggle like little girls as soon as they hear an afterburner so if all they get, as k5083 points out is a little toe drug across the water of knowledge, that's all one can hope for from 99.999% of the population. Then it is good that we do have the representation available in the form, mostly of N.A. aircraft. How many folks would turn out to RENO if the dominating racing class was comprised of P-36's?

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Don't make me go get my flying monkeys-