Airborne poetry – with a punch
From Sourwood Cove
By Clarence Newton

In my opinion, the “best looking” military airplane ever built was the sleek, fast, wellarmed, single seat North American P-51. It was beautiful and graceful whether in flight or sitting on the ground. If any military aircraft ever had sex appeal, it was the 51. It’s easy to imagine a few German fighters being shot down while pausing to admire her as she streaked before their eyes.

There are, no doubt, a few P-51 pilots living today throughout the country who flew them nearly 60 years ago during WWII. I know one pilot who was forced to put his 51 into the English Channel after it suffered combat damage. Also, there are some civilians that come to mind — postwar owner/pilots.

One man, who lived 140 miles east of Atlanta, acquired a 51 in 1960 and commuted to and from Atlanta in it. The trip took less than 30 minutes each way. He was a real dashing dandy executive of a building

corporation. Unfortunately, he and his airplane disappeared from the scene after he was arrested for dealing illegal drugs. He must have been an importer/broker — never even seeing or using the stuff. ‘Could have been that drugs were used to support his flying habit, because maintaining that baby did not come cheap.

Another P-51 owner in the mid-1970s was a young Turk from a wealthy family using dad’s money. That daring and gregarious fellow was a pilot with an airline — now defunct.

He was bold and dashing, even when it came to dealing with women. The guy was married and lived in a lakeside house with his attractive, intelligent wife and had the audacity to rent a lake cottage near his home for his flight attendant girlfriend. The wife soon discovered his little game and kicked him out before he could say snap-roll — something he had not planned for or expected. As far as I know, the poor guy flew his aluminum mistress to a new location or perhaps he sold it to pay alimony.

Another P-51 pilot was a WW II veteran and an expert flyer. He was CEO of a company that was listed on the New York Stock Exchange. One Sunday afternoon he flew to an airport about 50 miles north of Atlanta with a 14-year-old nephew of his vice president in the rear seat — a rear seat and flight controls had been incorporated into the civilian conversions. Soon after take-off for the return flight to Atlanta, he started a slow-roll at low altitude and only got half way through it as he crashed and burned, just missing a home.

What happened? The only plausible answer was that the boy was not properly secured in his seat and was thrown or slipped into the controls — stick or rudder pedals — thereby preventing the pilot from completing the roll. That would not be the first or last time that kind of accident would occur. Human error will never cease. The VP sadly lost a nephew but he immediately became the new corporate CEO.

The P-51 was called the fastest combat aircraft of WW2. However, the Navy claimed it had the fastest in the Grumman F-8-F Bearcat. It was a very late arrival, seeing little, if any, action in the Pacific War. Two stripped down F-8s were flown from Jacksonville to Miami in 1946 averaging 465 MPH, as I recall, setting a world speed record for propeller aircraft. The Bearcat was all power and muscle like a tough pro-wrestler, while the P- 51 was as sleek, fast and graceful as Muhammed Ali when he was known as young Cassius Clay, pursuing his opponents around the ring.

The P-51, later named the F-51 by the new Air Force 1947, was one fine work of metal sculpture with a deadly sting in combat in the hands of young pilots who felt that they were a part, or extention of, that wonderful and exciting flying machine called the P-51 MUSTANG. A Mustang is a small, swift, wild horse. That symbolism is okay by me as long as she's thought of as a beautiful, high-spirited filly.

— Clarence Newton

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