P-51 Mustang and Derivates Ideas and Inspiration

[GTX_Admin]

Congo

[GTX_Admin]

One I did a while ago:



Would require some sort of device to prevent too much water ingestion be the radiator intake on takeoff/landing.

Regards,

Greg

[Tophe]

Dear GTX,
forgetting panel lines and rivets, it is easy to find a solution for the radiator:

Thanks for the inspiration :)

[elmayerle]

had an idea for a hybrid Mustang with the nose art of "Junkyard Dawg".  The idea is that an aircraft salvage facility gets a P-51 (original four-cannon wing) with a trashed fuselage at the same time as they get a P-51B/C with a trashed wing.  Since the wing mounting points are essential identical and the wing is attached to the fuselage by four large bolts, they splice together the good fuselage with the good wing and get a Merlin-powered P-51 with four 20mm cannon in the wing.  Methinks it would make for an interesting defense aircraft for that facility, among other things.

[Daryl J.]

had an idea for a hybrid Mustang with the nose art of "Junkyard Dawg".  The idea is that an aircraft salvage facility gets a P-51 (original four-cannon wing) with a trashed fuselage at the same time as they get a P-51B/C with a trashed wing.  Since the wing mounting points are essential identical and the wing is attached to the fuselage by four large bolts, they splice together the good fuselage with the good wing and get a Merlin-powered P-51 with four 20mm cannon in the wing.  Methinks it would make for an interesting defense aircraft for that facility, among other things.

 :)

Do it!

[Jeffry Fontaine]

had an idea for a hybrid Mustang with the nose art of "Junkyard Dawg".  The idea is that an aircraft salvage facility gets a P-51 (original four-cannon wing) with a trashed fuselage at the same time as they get a P-51B/C with a trashed wing.  Since the wing mounting points are essential identical and the wing is attached to the fuselage by four large bolts, they splice together the good fuselage with the good wing and get a Merlin-powered P-51 with four 20mm cannon in the wing.  Methinks it would make for an interesting defense aircraft for that facility, among other things.

I acquired an Accurate Miniatures kit to do something like that with a P-51D.

[Rafael]

Hastily made with a FTB profile and part of one of GTX's DO-335s. Don't know what it is but I like it. What's the engine in this bird?

[elmayerle]

had an idea for a hybrid Mustang with the nose art of "Junkyard Dawg".  The idea is that an aircraft salvage facility gets a P-51 (original four-cannon wing) with a trashed fuselage at the same time as they get a P-51B/C with a trashed wing.  Since the wing mounting points are essential identical and the wing is attached to the fuselage by four large bolts, they splice together the good fuselage with the good wing and get a Merlin-powered P-51 with four 20mm cannon in the wing.  Methinks it would make for an interesting defense aircraft for that facility, among other things.

I acquired an Accurate Miniatures kit to do something like that with a P-51D.

The P-51D gets a bit more problematical in that the D wing has a different Main landing gear mounting (it sits at a different angle from the P-51B/C) which also results in a larger swept-forward leading edge at the wing root to accomodate the altered gear geometry.  This is where a lot of P-15B kits have an error, this inboard portion of the wing is not the same as that of the P-51D.  I suspect the change was to lower the nose and improve the view after the changes from P-51A to P-51B raised the sit angle on the ground (P-51B wing is some three inches farther from the main fuselage datum on the P-51B/C as compared to the P-51/A-36/P-51A).

[Tophe]

Hastily made with a FTB profile and part of one of GTX's DO-335s. Don't know what it is but I like it. What's the engine in this bird?

Thanks Rafael for the inspiration. My versions are twin-engined: the rear engine is cooled by the ventral radiator, and the front engine is cooled by the nose annular radiator:

[kitnut617]

Hastily made with a FTB profile and part of one of GTX's DO-335s. Don't know what it is but I like it. What's the engine in this bird?

The RR FTB was to be able to take any engine no matter what it's size or weight was (within reason), it was thought that a mid-engined arrangement would make it easier to do this than to try and convert an aircraft with the engine in the nose.  This design came about because RR tried to fit the RR Griffon onto a Mustang just as they had converted a Mustang Mk.I to take a Merlin, but they came across some really big cg issues, like having to place nearly 300 lbs of ballast as far back in the tail as it would go.  What with the heavier engine and all the ballast weight, it nullified any performance gained by the more powerful engine plus the structrual problems created by placing nearlyy 300 lbs in the tail.

So the original idea for the FTB (actually called the 'Private Venture Fighter') was be powered by a RR Griffon engine.  Have a look at reply #4 in this thread and you'll see my two models I've made of the FTB/PVF, the camo'ed one is the Private Venture Fighter powered by a Griffon, the silver one is how the FTB would have looked like had it flown, with a Hawker Tempest tail. This model I've done being powered by the RR Crecy engine, a V-12 two-stroke sleeve valve arrangement.

[GTX_Admin]

If you remove the ventral radiator etc, you could say it was an annular radiator cooled option.

Another option for the nose might be to borrow the spinner from this modified Spiteful that I did: 

[GTX_Admin]

A couple of Nighfighter variations on the P-51:




Backseater in both cases operates radar.

[sequoiaranger]

That two-seater:

Good Idea!

I made one in 1/48 almost identical to the drawing on the bottom (a RW aircraft, actually)---there was a war-weary "hack" two-seater P-51 that General Eisenhower flew in (as a passenger, with no parachute!) over Normandy to assess battlefield progress. My version was built in the 1980's to go with a Club project, so I have neither the original nor pictures.

[raafif]

a hack used by the 435th Fighter Squadron, 479th Fighter Group, 8th Air Force.

[elmayerle]

A couple of Nighfighter variations on the P-51:




Backseater in both cases operates radar.

That's the approach I'm taking to a P-51B nightfighter with the radar pod from a F4U-5N on the starboard wing.  Also considering an alternate approach with an additional underwing hard point on each side with the radar pod, podded similar to the P-38M radar, on one outboard hardpoint and either a third droptank or, say, a searchlight pod, on the other outboard hardpoint.  I'm thinking a gloss black paint job with dark red letters and a dark red version of the 4th fighter group's paint scheme; definitely with appropriate "nose art" applied.