I always wondered why they named the North American Aviation P-51 “Mustang”. Horses can’t fly right?
I digress, the P-51 was a long-range, single-seat fighter/fighter-bomber used in WWII and the Korean War. It used an engine called the Packard V-1650 Merlin and was armed with six M2 Browning machine guns, damn, that’s a lot of fire power for an airplane of that era.
The Mustang was very good in a dog fight and would escort bombers during raids over Germany. It saw battle during the North Africa, Mediterranean, Italian and Pacific theatres too and apparently destroyed 4,950 enemy aircraft by the war’s end.
The first time I saw it was in Saving Private Ryan, when Tom Hanks was on the brink of death facing a Tiger 1 and a P-51 swooped in to destroy it.
Or who can forget the scene in Empire of the Sun when Christian Bale shouts “P-51 Mustang, Cadillac of the sky!” as a squadron flies in to liberate the POW camp?
I had built a P-51 before in a slightly larger scale(1:90) so it wasn’t too difficult to miniaturise it further. Some details are very hard to include when working in a small scale but I managed to fit wheels and guns into this MOC, both done using a 1×1 round plate with bar, a very versatile piece.
This aircraft comes in many paint schemes and the first one I made is what I believe to be from the 375th Squadron, but you could easily change out a few pieces to get the squadron colours you like.
For example, the second one with the blue nose is from the 487th Fighter Squadron, and I added in some stickers which I printed out on label paper and cut out. It’s a painstaking process but I did it just to add that little extra detail, although a printed tile would be much better on the eyes.
I also used black and white tiles as the “invasion stripes”, which the allies used to differentiate between friend or foe.
The last one is from the P-51 Tuskegee Airmen Red Tail Squadron, and was featured in the movie Red Tails. It was only after watching that film that I learnt about the brave African-American pilots who risked their lives during WWII, a period where segregation was still predominant. It’s an inspiring drama that is worth a watch.
Here’s how to build my version of the P-51 Mustang:
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Tip: Using 1×1 modified bricks with studs gives you choices when building sideways so play around with these useful pieces, especially headlight bricks!