The last fighter pilot, Jerry Yellin

I don't have the figures at hand but the P-51 with two drop tanks and careful engine management did have a range of over 1000 miles. They escorted the B-29's on the raids to Japan. They flew some long missions.

 

P-51 range with 2 drop tanks was over 1,650 miles!

 

About 20 years ago Jerry asked me to fly my P-51 to his home airport in Iowa. I talked another Mustang owner to meet me there and we did some fly by's for the large group of school kids Jerry was talking to. He was a great man.

Just a few facts about the missions to further prove how heroic these guys were.

Unlike any other aircraft I have ever heard of or flown, a P-51 suffers from some serious danger areas. Put the flaps up all the way on a go around and in a split second you are upside down and dead. Same thing if you just put all the power in too quickly.
Pull too hard on the stick and the stall characteristics are not good compared to almost all other aircraft.

Try to get the air to stick back to the wing after a stall, takes forever and a secondary and tertiary stall are literally less then a pound of force on the stick away.

And these guys fought were energy management and best turning radius meant they were almost always at the lower end of the speed range of the fighter.

The guy who flew the real "Worry Bird" Bob Frisch told me a story of an IFR let down he was doing and as he was flying at 200mph he saw an apple tree go by.

Another story when he was flying F-102's and he was signing out the airplane, a superior officer asked if he could take it to get his flight time in. As the superior officer was coming in on approach it simple blew up.


After an hour and a half in the seat I literally can't feel my butt. Can't imagine ten hours.

I had a friend who has passed away, who was sitting on alert in an F-86 and it was zero zero wether. They got the call to go and they went. Only one aircraft made it back, my friend and two others had to eject. They knew that before they took off.

Certainly a tough way to make a living.

 

Mike, I think that I mentioned it before but I got a ride in "Worry Bird " before you bought it. The pilot/ owner that restored it was obviously not too competent in it and I could sense that he was behind it most of the time. During and after take off I realized that I accepted the ride with someone who was barely current in the airplane.There were some moments that were a bit puckering when he was supposed to be flying formation with other fighters in the flight display. The power in all spectrums was unforgettable and I was relieved when the landing was successful. Image Unavailable, Please Login