Time for another quick look at that most famous of American Fighters, the Mustang

Early Mustangs are often maligned for their Allison engine. But the Allison V-1710 is sort of a moving target. Like all wartime engines it went through its own development cycle. The versions used in the early Mustangs were continuously improved. The earliest were really good only down low. Those very early planes were P-51, F-6A, and A-36 in US service. The P-51A was the last of the sort. It used a V-1710-89 engine that delivered good performance up to 20000 feet with a top speed over 400 mph. This was acceptable for Pacific action and the P-51A was used in India/Burma by the 311th Fighter-Bomber Group in much the same way later Mustangs were used in Europe. A small number of P-51A were converted to F-6B, and these even saw use in the MTO.

But that altitude limitation is the well known catch. In Europe, US bombers were routinely flying above 30000 feet. To get where the action was, the Mustang would need to get much higher. That’s why the well known 60 series Merlin Engine came into play. This was used for all P-51 B/C/D/H/K type aircraft, and indeed it was a War winning combination.
But for the record, in August of 1945, it was decided to switch the coming P-82 Twin Mustang back to an improved Allison Engine (V1710-100). The issues between Merlin and Allison were never that deep seated, it had more to do with boost than the engines themselves. And an Allison with the right Turbo and Super charging was an equal beast to a similar Merlin. It happened, that at a critical juncture, the Merlin offered better development and has broadly been seen as the “better” engine ever since.

Which all leads us to this particular Mustang. No doubt a little uncommon looking for an early Mustang. It would have been delivered in Olive Drab over Neutral Grey paint like all Mustangs until late in B/C production. But this plane was not deployed to a war zone, it was kept for testing at Wright Field in Dayton. Stripped of paint and armament it could easily get over 400 mph. And it was ideal for comparison testing with a number of other types, many of which (like the XP-55 Ascender) used the same engine. For what its worth, the Mustang out performed the Ascender in most critical aspects.

This is the Accurate Miniatures kit with decals by Three Guys Replicas.