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00:29Fast and sleek, looking every inch the thoroughbred fighter it was, the North American P-51 Mustang rose from obscurity to carve out a unique place in aviation history.
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00:58Loved by its pilots, feared by its enemies, the Mustang possessed a rare blend of speed, agility and range that made it an unbeatable air-to-air fighter.
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01:42And I could sit there and reach all the switches and everything. I didn't have to get a bunch of pillows or anything. I could move the seats up and fly it and it really was an easy airplane to fly.
01:53I don't know how to describe it. As I said, they were very responsive. You felt you could outfly anything. It just was an easy plane to take off, to land. It was very maneuverable. You could break right or left almost with equal ease.
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02:15It had more power, more maneuverability, more speed, more climb. It probably was better than anything the Germans had by 2%. I was in a lot of dogfights where I was very happy with my 2%.
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02:38When the Mustang appeared in the skies over Europe, the United States Army Air Force pilots finally had the ability to carry the fight to the Luftwaffe over Nazi Germany itself.
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02:53Oh, those planes were very maneuverable. The 109s and the 190s were a good airplane the Germans had.
03:02But then we got the 51s, which was a different story altogether. And when you got into the 51, you think to yourself, oh God, if this damn thing ever quits that. But that Merlin engine would run like an old Model A Ford. Just ran forever.
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03:20Now when the P-51 came along, that changed the range. Gosh, we can fly forever in a P-51. And I think my longest P-51 mission was a little over six hours. P-38, oh, four and a half hours would be about the longest, maybe 445. So there are some targets that became available to us after we got the P-51.
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03:49And while the German Focke-Volfe 190 and Messerschmitt 109 outclassed earlier American fighters, the P-51 outperformed them both.
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04:01Plane for plane, nothing could beat a Mustang with a good man behind the stick.
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04:09I got behind this guy on a descending course and was gaining on him. And I opened fire and I had a number of hits on his wings and fuselage.
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04:23And he immediately broke hard up. And again, I was overrunning him. So I had to go up and then back down. But when I turned back down, I found him coming up at me. And I did not to this day figured out how he did that.
04:41But I know that he got on my tail. The 109 has a 20 millimeter cannon that fires right through the hub of the propeller. And I went into a Loughberry circle. That's as tight a circle as you can turn.
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05:03And he was directly behind me. So that my only view of him was to look straight back like this.
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05:13And every time I looked, that 20 millimeter cannon was blinking. And I've got nothing but a thin plexiglass cover over my head. Fortunately, those shells were going just behind my tail.
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05:34I made, I think, probably 75 to 100 circle. But whether it was the Mustang that much better than the 109 or whether I was that much better than him or a combination of both, I was gaining on him.
05:52And he finally rolled over and headed straight down and I decided to let him get away. And he got away and so did I. I hit him. He didn't hit me.
06:02But we had a 10 minute individual battle.
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06:08Though today the Mustang is considered to be one of the greatest American fighters ever built, oddly enough, it began its career as a reconnaissance aircraft, flown not by the United States, but by Britain's Royal Air Force.
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06:31It would take almost four years for the Mustang to evolve into a war winner. Four years that started with an odd request and an impossible deadline in the darkest days of World War II.
06:47The British were looking to the U.S. aircraft manufacturers to make fighter aircraft for them. They approached North American hoping they would build P-40 Warhawks. North American came back at them with a counter proposal. They would design and build and fly a completely new aircraft within 100 days.
07:12At the time in 1940, the British were utterly desperate for anything that could be a combat ready fighter. So they were going all over the United States looking for anything that they could purchase.
07:22When North American made their proposal, the British actually snapped at the opportunity. They just went for it because they needed aircraft quickly. And North American was promising delivery of the prototype within 100 days or so. And they were promising an aircraft better than the P-40 and they needed something better than the Tomahawk.
07:40And in fact, North American did exactly what they promised. In 117 days, they had the prototype of the P-51 Mustang, which was called the NA-73 constructed. And within 130 days, that prototype flew for the first time.
07:55The British initially ordered 600 of the P-51s and they were very enthusiastic about this aircraft. However, despite that enthusiasm by their British allies, the American aviation authorities are really not interested in the P-51 at all until two years later.
08:25The Royal Air Force soon took delivery of about 600 of the new North American fighters, which they dubbed the Mustang One.
08:34British pilots soon discovered they had a terrific low-level aircraft on their hands.
08:45With a top speed of almost 390 miles per hour on the deck, the Mustang One was probably the fastest American fighter of its day.
08:54Light on the controls, very agile and capable of climbing at over 3,000 feet a minute, the Mustang looked like a real winner.
09:02However, the new plane did have its share of serious drawbacks.
09:11The original Mustangs came out with Allison engines.
09:15They were extremely good for low-level work.
09:21And that's what the British used them for, low-level fighter sweeps, tactical recon.
09:27They were unsuited for long-range escort work because the engine could not perform adequately at high altitude.
09:36While the Mustang One did not have exceptional high-altitude performance, the British still loved the aircraft because down low, it was awesome.
09:45It was fast, it was quick, it could get away from anything.
09:47So they used it in a variety of roles, mainly low-altitude tack recon and armed reconnaissance against ground targets.
09:54But sooner or later, they were bound to come into contact with the Luftwaffe.
09:58And in August of 1942, the first Mustang kill of the war was scored.
10:02And it's kind of an interesting incident because the fellow, Hollis Hills, was a Royal Canadian Air Force pilot who happened to be an American,
10:09flying an American aircraft in British service, and he shot down a Focke-Wolf 190.
10:14So it was one of those incidents of the war that truly reflected the international character of the Allied war effort.
10:21Flying at treetop level and facing scores of light and medium flak batteries on every mission, the brave Mustang pilots pressed on,
10:34snapping photos of key installations and shooting up anything on the ground that moved.
10:44While the British found the Mustang very useful in Western Europe, at first the United States Army Air Force
10:50had little interest in the new fighter.
10:53It took some time before the Americans could be won over by the glowing reports coming back from the RAF
11:00on the Mustang's combat record.
11:03Almost reluctantly, the USAAF ordered a small number of Mustangs, dubbed the P-51A,
11:10and sent them to observation and tactical reconnaissance squadrons.
11:13Unfortunately, the Allison engine and its lack of a supercharger continued to limit the plane's high-level performance,
11:26a fact not lost upon the American pilots.
11:28The very first P-51s were the A, had an Allison engine, and they were used for dive bombing and various things, but they were not very impressive.
11:41I flew an A, oh, a few hours in an A out of England just practicing.
11:50We didn't have enough airplanes, and so I flew, we had a couple of A's on the field, and I flew that to practice some dive bombing.
11:58Because it was basically a dive bomber. They didn't have the power, and they were just not as responsive.
12:09It had an Allison engine in it, and it really couldn't keep up with much of anything.
12:15As I said, it was primarily a dive bomber.
12:17In late 1942, North American, utilizing some of the best features of the P-51A, unveiled a new version of the Mustang,
12:28designed as a single-seat dive bomber, and called it the A-36 Apache.
12:34Only a couple hundred A-36s were produced, enough to equip a couple of fighter bomber groups,
12:41and those fighter bomber groups ended up serving in the Mediterranean or in Burma.
12:45The problem with the A-36 was it couldn't carry a heavy load, especially compared to the P-47, so it didn't last long in service.
12:53It was also vulnerable to ground fire, and in steep dives, you had a tendency, the pilots had a tendency,
13:00to torque the tail section and actually do structural damage in steep dives.
13:06So it was not particularly effective as a combat dive bomber,
13:10but what it did do was deliver ordnance with pinpoint accuracy far above and beyond anything that the other fighter bombers the Army Air Force had at the time.
13:20Coming in at medium altitude, the Apache squadrons would line up on their targets, then wing over into steep dives,
13:33opening their butterfly flaps as they went to slow their descent.
13:36Using their reflector gun sights to aim, the pilots would wait until the very last possible moment to drop their bombs.
13:46At about a thousand feet, they would pull up and come off target.
13:50Such hair-raising dives took nerves of steel and excellent marksmanship.
13:55But when done right, no other Army Air Force aircraft could get its bombs on target with better accuracy.
14:12And since it had derived from a fighter, the A-36 could fight its way out of trouble.
14:16In fact, Apache pilots scored many air-to-air victories and at least one even became an ace.
14:25While the A-36 enjoyed limited success, dive bombing never really gained acceptance in an Army Air Force dominated by strategic bombing advocates.
14:36After serving for about a year, the dive bomber groups were all re-equipped and given fighters.
14:41In the A-36, the Mustang had reached an evolutionary dead end.
14:48But just when it looked like it would barely be a footnote to the European air campaign,
14:53a few inventive minds rescued North American's design and gave it a new lease on life.
15:11By mid-1943, the Mustang had seen combat as a reconnaissance aircraft, a dive bomber, and a ground attack fighter.
15:23As a pure fighter, however, it seemed destined to be a failure.
15:26But just as it appeared the Mustang would be relegated to minor roles in the air war,
15:33a few men came up with a brilliant idea that would transform the P-51 into the most effective air superiority fighter history has ever seen.
15:42There was a British pilot by the name of Harker who got the idea of taking a Mustang One airframe and mating it with a British Merlin engine.
15:51And he proposed this to a U.S. Air Force, Army Air Force colonel by the name of Hitchcock, who agreed that this might be a worthy thing to do.
16:00So they went off and they got approval for this and they took a Merlin engine, put it into a Mustang,
16:06and discovered that they had a thoroughbred fighter with excellent eye-altitude capability.
16:10The Merlin was being produced in the United States at the time by Packard.
16:15And so pretty soon the approval was given to produce the Mustang with the Packard-built Merlin engine.
16:22And that became the P-51B, the first true strategic fighter of World War II.
16:27The British engine that Packard built was extremely reliable, great engine, lots of power, and altitude performance.
16:37It had a two-stage, two-speed supercharger that let it get to high altitude.
16:42So it was a superior performer in every way.
16:47With a top speed of almost 450 miles per hour at high altitude,
16:51the Merlin-powered Mustang now had the engine needed to carry the fight to the Luftwaffe as an air-to-air fighter.
16:59British and German fighters generally had an endurance of about two to three hours,
17:04which meant their combat radius was somewhere around 300 miles.
17:08With additional long-range drop tanks, the Mustangs soon proved they could fly for up to eight hours.
17:20That meant the P-51 could range over the farthest reaches of Nazi Germany and still return to bases in England.
17:27The United States Army Air Force had its first strategic fighter, and it appeared on the scene none too soon.
17:42Through the fall of 1943, the heavy bombers of America's 8th Air Force had been taking a beating over Germany.
17:48Without escort fighters, the 8th's B-17s and B-24s were being shot to pieces by the Luftwaffe.
17:57Their bomber generals had begun screaming for a new fighter that could stay with their groups all the way to Berlin and back.
18:05It seemed a tall order, but the new P-51B fit the bill perfectly.
18:11In the early part of the war, before the Mustangs came in, they couldn't get escort beyond a certain point.
18:24The 47s and 38s could only take them part way, and then they had to go back.
18:30And when our group came, we could take them clear into target and pick them back up on the other side.
18:39So, of course, there were only a handful of us initially, but we were able to help them a little bit.
18:48Later, of course, 51s were all over the place.
18:52We used to watch them in prison camp, and when they'd go over, it'd look like each bomber had their own 51 escort with them.
19:01The P-51s were the work horses. There were so many more P-51s because their range was farther, and I think their maneuverability was better.
19:14They were our little buddies.
19:16They didn't have much use for us.
19:21They didn't understand what it was like to drive a truck.
19:27In December of 1943, the first P-51B group, the 354th, arrived in England.
19:35We flew the P-39 up until we got to Europe, up until we left for Europe.
19:44We had no idea of what we were going to fly when we landed.
19:47They cut orders sending Jack Bradley and Bob Stevens and myself to an English base to check out a new airplane.
20:02When we got back, they were already bringing P-51s in, B model, and so we were off and running in P-51.
20:14New to combat, the 354th promptly received an education at the hands of the Luftwaffe.
20:22We learned that combat is not really fun sport.
20:30On the first mission, my first mission was about three hours, and the weather was terrible.
20:40We were in danger of mid-air collision with each other.
20:49I saw no enemy aircraft, but one did come in and shot one plane down.
20:55We lost a man, a plane, and a pilot on our very first mission, on the first mission I flew.
21:01It was the second mission the group flew.
21:05And so I found out that this is serious.
21:10Pete Quezada was our commanding general, head of 9th Fighter Command at that time.
21:18Pete came in and talked to us, and I remember him saying,
21:21you are in a very serious business. Not all of you will live to get home.
21:31With their new weapon, however, the Pioneer Mustangs did not take long to score.
21:37On December 13, 1943, a pilot from the group's 355th Fighter Squadron shot down an ME-110 over Kiel, Germany.
21:46It would be the first of 700 kills.
21:51But the price of victory was high.
21:57We went overseas with about 75 pilots in the group,
22:03maybe 80 counting pilots in group and so forth.
22:07And we lost 220, and you gotta stop to think that we're the number one scoring group in the war,
22:18that we had more victories per loss than any other group,
22:24and yet we lose over double our numbers in the two and a half years we were in combat,
22:32two years we were in combat.
22:34At first, the Germans were puzzled by the appearance of the Mustang over what had been their own skies.
22:45Luftwaffe pilots frequently mistook the 51 for an ME-109.
22:50That led to some strange episodes in the air.
22:53The Germans didn't know what it was.
22:56In fact, on one early mission, a 109 joined the formation and flew alongside for 10 seconds
23:10before he recognized what he had done and peeled off and headed away.
23:16I don't remember whether somebody got him or not.
23:22Indeed, the P-51 resembled the ME-109's profile so closely that even American aviators were fooled on occasion.
23:29Because of the greenhouse canopy, it looked very much like an ME-109.
23:38So one of the problems we initially had was getting shot at by our own aircraft.
23:45P-47s primarily never ran into any 38s and the 17s and 24s.
23:55Despite the recognition problems both sides had with the Merlin engine Mustangs,
24:00the new fighter quickly proved it could change the entire nature of the strategic air war over Europe.
24:05Well, of course, we could go a lot farther than we could previously.
24:13I think the operation of the missions remained the same.
24:18But the tactics had changed.
24:20Initially, early on with the P-38, we were not allowed to leave the bombers.
24:25When the tactics changed that we could go out ahead of the bombers
24:28and attack the German fighter force as it was climbing up to do battle against the heavies,
24:37that was when the shades of war changed
24:41because we had a lot better chance to kill the German air force
24:47if we could go out and attack them ahead of the bomber force
24:50rather than wait for them to attack the bomber force.
24:54The 354th fighter group and its new Mustangs had changed the nature of the air war
25:02and in doing so had rescued the 8th Air Force's faltering strategic bombing campaign.
25:13Now it became absolutely essential to get as many P-51s to England as possible.
25:19Only then could the Luftwaffe be driven from Europe's skies.
25:22In December of 1943, Colonel Don Blakeslee paid a visit to the 354th Fighter Group
25:43and spent several days teaching the new outfit some of the finer points of air combat tactics
25:48to use against the Luftwaffe.
25:55He led our mission three times and he obviously liked what he found with the P-51
26:02because he went back and pulled strings until the fourth group got him.
26:09So he liked it, no question.
26:13Blakeslee, after flying with the 354th, fell in love with the Mustang.
26:18So he went to the CO of the 8th Fighter Command, General Ike Kepner,
26:22and begged Kepner for Mustangs for the fourth fighter group.
26:25Kepner agreed to let his group convert, provided that they get in the air
26:30and fly combat as quickly as possible.
26:33And so Blakeslee agreed and he went back to the group.
26:37He trained the guys very quickly on the P-51 and within just a few days of converting,
26:42they were in the skies over Germany.
26:44And with their new Mustangs, the fourth fighter group went on to become one of the highest scoring outfits of the war.
26:49They finished combat in Europe and didn't fly in the Pacific.
26:54So just in Europe, they scored over a thousand air and ground victories.
27:00As more P-51Bs arrived in England, the 8th Air Force began to convert its P-47 groups.
27:08In January, only about 50 P-51s were combat ready to escort the bombers over Germany.
27:14By April, however, almost 400 were available.
27:18And some of the hottest squadrons in England were now equipped with the revolutionary fighter.
27:27As the number of Mustangs in Europe increased, the Luftwaffe's losses skyrocketed.
27:33Through the spring of 1944, the German Air Force lost between 10 and 30% of its fighter pilots each month.
27:40While the Luftwaffe always had planes on hand, by the summer of 1944, it faced a pilot shortage so acute that it proved impossible to solve.
27:56Even though the Mustang was winning the war in the air, the P-51B model did have a number of bugs that took time to be ironed out.
28:03Some of these defects could be disastrous in combat.
28:11We had initially a problem with gun feed. You're in a high speed turn and pull up to so many Gs and it would stop your guns from firing.
28:24And the wing was so narrow that you couldn't stand the machine guns upright in the wing.
28:34They had to be over at about a 45 degree angle.
28:38And consequently, the belt, when it came over with the shells, every once in a while, as it came over that hump, they'd jam.
28:46And so it wasn't at all unusual to fire off a few bursts and have all your guns jammed.
28:56In fact, a couple of mechanics in our group devised the system which would keep it feeding no matter how many Gs you put on it.
29:05In the early summer of 1944, most of the issues with the P-51B had been solved.
29:14The B would remain in service at least until the end of 1944.
29:19But long before that, a new version of the Mustang had entered service.
29:24Dubbed the P-51D, it would soon earn a reputation as the ultimate Mustang variant.
29:30A lot of the P-51s had 1,500 horsepower. The Ds, the ones they used the most, had 1,650 in those. Packard-Murley engines.
29:47The visibility is the main thing because the Ds and Cs had the windshield and all the glass fared right into the back of the aircraft.
29:56The D had a big bubble canopy on it and you had unlimited visibility in that.
30:02That was the biggest advantage, plus the fact that they had more horsepower.
30:09And they had six .50 caliber machine guns on board, three in each plane.
30:15And they had different drop bomb shackles and stuff on them.
30:23I shot the six several times just to make sure that we knew what was going to happen because they'd slow you down.
30:31Oh, 50 miles an hour, the minute you start firing, the recoil would slow the airplane right down.
30:36And when you had all six of them going, it really knocked like that.
30:42At this time of the war, a lot of our duty was strafing and dive bombing.
30:48And with our new Ds, we went out on a dive bombing mission.
30:54And we had, in the three missions we flew that day, I think we had eight planes that peeled the wings off on the dive.
31:04The extra gun in each wing had weakened the wings so that right in the middle of your dive, a wing would peel back.
31:17Not a terrible place to be.
31:19You've got a bomb you're riding down and even if you jump, you're going to be in the middle of the explosion.
31:25And we got back, they grounded the P-51 and we didn't fly for a couple of days and then they had modified the wing.
31:36We got it back and used it the rest of the war.
31:39With the success of the Mustangs in England, fighter units in Italy began converting to the P-51.
31:45One of the first outfits to do so was the 332nd Fighter Group, which initially received P-51Bs and Cs,
31:54but finished the war with the D model.
31:57Dubbed the Red Tails, the 332nd was one of the most unique organizations in Army Air Force history.
32:06The 332nd was the only all-black fighter group in the United States Air Force.
32:11Because of the racial situation in America at that time,
32:14they were subject to a great deal of abuse and racial prejudice even while they were fighting this war.
32:20But despite those problems that they had with their fellow servicemen, they rose above those issues
32:26and they performed admirably, especially in the role of escorts for the heavy bombers in the Italian theater.
32:35Commanded by Colonel Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., seen here briefing his men,
32:40the Red Tails took their new job very seriously.
32:43Meticulously prepared and dedicated, the 332nd proved to be the outstanding escort group of the war.
32:51They had an excellent reputation and we were always very happy to see them.
33:01They were readily identified with that red tail.
33:04And yes, I can, now that I think about it, I can recall at least once when there were fighters approaching us
33:16and they took off after them and we went on to the target without a single fighter getting into us.
33:25But I'm sure that happened more often than we knew about too.
33:31The 332nd fighter group claims one of the most unique distinctions of World War II.
33:36Despite all the missions they flew and despite all the opposition they encountered over Germany,
33:41especially towards the end of the war, they never lost a bomber that they escorted in any of the groups that they flew with.
33:47No other fighter group in World War II can claim that kind of an honor or distinction.
33:52While other units scored more aerial victories, the Red Tails earned the respect and admiration of the 15th Air Force's bomber crews.
34:03Where once the Tuskegee Airmen had been spurned and derided,
34:07by the end of the war the bomber groups were requesting them as their escort.
34:12We had a good escort.
34:14The black guys, they would fly the 51s and they'd come up and as we was coming back off our mission then,
34:23see one group would take us into the target and then the other group would escort us home.
34:29And so as it was being escorted home, the black guys would get out there and there was one in particular,
34:39you know, he was a card. He'd get out there and do all kinds of tricks with that plane, you know, and amuse us, you know.
34:45The Red Tails had become the ultimate little friends and through their efforts had forged a bond in the air that transcended race and color.
34:54Meanwhile, as groups such as the Pioneer Mustangs and the Red Tails battled the Luftwaffe,
35:05the P-51 was poised to bring the war home to another enemy, the Japanese.
35:11Soon Mustangs would control the skies over Tokyo itself, ensuring Japan's total and irreversible defeat.
35:18Early Mustang variants such as the P-51A and A-36 had seen action against the Japanese as early as 1943 in the China, Burma, India theater.
35:44Those early days of Mustang operations were unspectacular, but the plane did prove to be faster than almost anything the Japanese could pit against it.
35:59Most frequently, however, the early Mustangs were called upon to deliver ground strikes, strafing targets in Burma, China.
36:07Mustang pilots would also go after shipping along the Burma coast, hoping to choke off the supplies to the Imperial Army fighting in the jungle.
36:17It was not until the capture of Iwo Jima that the Mustang truly came into its own in the Pacific.
36:24We had a whole bunch of Army P-51 Mustangs. That's the reason we took down and spent all that blood was to provide a staging base for the P-51s to escort the B-29s on their raids against Japan.
36:45The P-29s were all out of Saipan and Tinian, where we had just come from, 700 miles south, and the P-51s would pick them up or meet them as they come over Saipan or over Iwo on the way to Tokyo and escort them to Tokyo and back, which was 1,500 miles up and back to Iwo.
37:08These fighter escort missions, taking the B-29s to Japan from Iwo Jima, took anywhere from seven to eight hours to complete.
37:18And even though the P-51 was an excellent airplane to fly, the strain on the legs and lower backs of these pilots for flying for that length of time caused many of them to be cramped up when they returned from these missions to the point where they had to be assisted out of their airplanes by the ground crews.
37:34And so to do this day after day, over and over again, took a great deal of courage and stamina on the parts of these pilots.
37:41The first missions we flew were bomber escort, and once we got there and flying up down the bomber line, we could pick out targets on the ground.
37:53We'd go down and nothing definite at first, and later on we had definite targets, like Atsugi Air Base was one of our first targets.
38:03And the B-29s would take us up there specifically to make this run on this airbase.
38:09They'd wait for us offshore. We'd go in, hit the aircraft and the installations on these airbases in Japan.
38:18B-29s on this type of mission were just escorting us.
38:23They're our navigational planes, and they'd stay about 20,000 feet offshore, and we always gave them a high cover, at least four P-51s to stay above them, protect them, waiting for us to get off the target and come back.
38:39On one occasion, after we'd finished working over this target, we homed in on the B-29, sending us a signal, the locator where we could find him.
38:51As we approached it, we could see the Japanese starting to make passes on our B-29, which gave us a little bit of work, because he was our ticket back home.
39:01Fortunately, the high cover prevented this, and they shot down the attacking Japanese before we got there.
39:16By the spring of 1945, Mustangs roamed the length and breadth of the Japanese home islands, protecting the heavy bomber streams, while searching for targets of opportunity.
39:29Japan's interceptor force was soon driven from the skies.
39:34It so happened on this mission over Japan, we were flying high cover for the B-29s.
39:45We were up around 25,000 feet, and suddenly I lost power, and the manifold pressure dropped way back, and I thought I had serious engine problems.
39:57I sweated out for a little while, and I called my wingman and said, I'm going to have to go down, and I was just looking for a spot to bail out, because this is the day they firebombed Tokyo and Yokohama pretty badly.
40:09The fireballs were coming up 5,000 feet high, and so I thought I'd get out offshore as far as I could if I had to jump out.
40:19As I was descending, trying to get my engine running again, we noticed several tojos below us and climbing towards the B-29s.
40:29And I was directly behind one tojo, so I just closed in as fast as I could and opened fire, and the debris started flying off, and my wingman shot one on the left side.
40:44So I still was concerned about my engine, but I forgot it during the combat, and I didn't realize until I got well off the target the engine was running pretty well again.
41:00With little fuel available and even fewer experienced pilots, Japan's air defenses collapsed.
41:07There wasn't quite a difference in the Japanese pilots near the end of the war.
41:14In fact, I think the group we ran into, the tojos, I think it was just a big training group, because they were just flying as no evasive attempt or anything on their part.
41:27We just closed in on them, like shooting ducks.
41:30If I had had a better engine, I probably would have stayed longer in that group.
41:33But several of them were shot down by the other P-51 pilots.
41:45By the summer of 1945, the Iwo-based Mustangs had gained total control of the skies over Japan.
41:56Without fear of interception, the P-51s went down on the deck and searched for targets of opportunity.
42:01Nothing was safe from their murderous .50 calibers.
42:14When Japan finally surrendered in August of 1945, there were hundreds of P-51s based on Iwo Jima ready to support the planned invasion of Kyushu.
42:24Fortunately, the surrender made that operation unnecessary.
42:25In the final months of the war in Europe, almost 2,000 Mustangs protected the American heavy bombers.
42:27Such protective shield proved almost impossible to be able to avoid the use of the war and the war.
42:28In the final months of the war in Europe, almost 2,000 Mustangs protected the American heavy bombers.
42:40In the final months of the war in Europe, almost 2,000 Mustangs protected the American heavy bombers.
42:53Such a protective shield proved almost impossible for the Luftwaffe to penetrate.
42:59Bomber losses plummeted, and Germany's cities and industries were systematically devastated by the American strategic bombing campaign.
43:07With the fighters knocking down every German plane they saw in the sky, and the bombers pulverizing Germany's war industry on the ground, the Allied Air Forces were virtually unopposed in the air.
43:23Flak and small arms fire, however, still posed a great threat, especially to the liquid-cooled engine of the Mustang.
43:30We were out on a search-and-destroy mission.
43:38I found six German trucks on the road, went in strafing and set four of them on fire on the first pass, and pulled up.
43:48I had not seen any return fire, so I went back to get the other two.
43:52And when I went back the second time, I found myself going across an open field with a hundred German soldiers on their knees with rifles firing at us.
44:06And probably they came from the trucks we burned.
44:10And a P-51 will not take a lot of punishment.
44:16If you lose your coolant, you're done.
44:20And I lost my coolant.
44:22I got up to 8,000 feet, and the coolant hit temperature, hit the red peg, and there was no way I began to lose power.
44:37I started calling for May Day for a fix.
44:42I pulled the red handle, and the canopy flew off, just like they told me it would.
44:49I started to jump, and I had my shoulder strap laying on my shoulder.
44:54Pulled me back.
44:55I picked up the microphone, said goodbye.
44:58Undid the shoulder strap, made another jump.
45:00I hit the end of the radio cord, couldn't get back, dropped back in.
45:06As long as I was back, I said goodbye.
45:09Unplugged the radio, made a third attempt, and got my head out.
45:14I'm going 100 miles an hour, 105 maybe.
45:18And the wind caught my goggles and pulled them out about a foot from my head.
45:23I pulled my head back, and they snapped back, and I dropped back down in the seat.
45:28So I plugged the radio in and said goodbye, took the helmet off, and fourth try, I got out.
45:36Found myself hanging very quietly over a tank battle down below me.
45:43Quiet up in the air, no sound in the air, but a lot of sound, gunfire.
45:50Both heavy and light gunfire down below.
45:54I was east of Metz, and the Germans still held Metz.
45:58I get on the ground.
45:59I hid under a bush.
46:02A German half-track pulled into the field, and two soldiers with rifles were looking for me.
46:10I thought, well, they know I'm here.
46:14So I stood up and put my hand up.
46:16Got halfway there, and I noticed that over the German Iron Cross was a crudely painted white star.
46:25And they were a captured vehicle, and they were part of Patton's 3rd Army, and they were 40 miles ahead of where people thought they were.
46:38And so I got a ride with them, and the next day they flew me back by a cub observation plane at my base.
46:49Even though the liquid-cooled engine was a drawback when the 51s were used to hit ground targets, the Mustang was still considered to be the best mass-produced fighter of the war, and some would argue, of all time.
47:04Near the end of World War II, the Mustang's apex of success had been reached.
47:14But even at this pinnacle, the shadows of its own downfall could be seen on the horizon.
47:19With the advent of the Mr. Schmidt 262, the first operational jet fighter, the Germans had really dealt the death blow to the piston engine fighter design.
47:30And while the Mr. Schmidt 262 really represented the future, the pilots flying the older designs, the Mustangs, really figured out in the final days of the war how best to fight their aircraft against this new technological marvel.
47:45And so on many occasions, the Mustang pilots actually came out on top, despite the Mr. Schmidt 262's amazing speed.
47:51On this particular day, in April 1945, I was on a search-and-destroy mission.
48:01I was at 12,000 feet with four planes.
48:05I spotted movement down below me, and I recognized the silhouette of a Messerschmitt 262 jet, and I had 10,000 feet altitude.
48:17He was at two.
48:19So I rolled over.
48:21I was determined he wasn't going to get away from me, so I beat Chuck Yeager through the sound barrier.
48:30I thought the airplane was coming apart.
48:34I went into what's called compressibility, lost complete control of the aircraft.
48:40It felt like the control stick had become unhoofed.
48:45It was all over the cockpit, and nothing happened.
48:48As I was going down to lower altitude, the thicker the air got, the more I began to feel something on the stick.
48:57I prayed for it to be there, and I began to ease out, and I came out, and would you believe the 262 was right square in front of me?
49:11I didn't, I don't think I moved two degrees before I started shooting, and I shot a piece of one wing off, and shot the left jet on fire.
49:26And I was overrunning him, so I pulled off and was going to come back, but by the time I pulled off, he was going straight up.
49:37P-51s won't go straight up very long.
49:41I tried to go after him, but he was going straight up, and I thought I'd lost him.
49:47One jet was burning, and all of a sudden he stopped and started sliding back down, tail first, and he ejected and hung in his parachute.
49:58And I felt like the champion of the world, I just, I was ecstatic.
50:08In 1996, I think it was, I went to the German fighter pilots meeting and met the pilot I shot down.
50:17He and his wife both gave me a big hug.
50:19He says, you saved my life.
50:21He says, I had 25 pilots in my unit when you shot me down, and he said, they had a bullet wound in his left side, so he never had to fly again.
50:33And because of that, he said, two weeks, two, three weeks later, there were only four of my unit alive, and he said, so you saved my life.
50:43So I said, no problem, buddy, anytime.
50:46When the war ended, the new jet fighters, like the P-80 and F-86, soon eclipsed the Mustang as America's premier air superiority fighter.
51:00But for a fleeting moment, the P-51 had become a king of the skies.
51:05But all too soon, the march of technology had bumped it from its throne.
51:09Within just a few years of the war's end, the Mustang had been relegated to second-line status.
51:16All together, about 15,000 P-51s had been built, but thousands were scrapped wholesale in the months following the end of the war.
51:32Others, a precious few, were sold off to racing pilots and enthusiasts.
51:38During the first year of the Korean War, the Mustang reclaimed a bit of its lost glory,
51:47as it was pressed back into service as a ground-attack aircraft.
51:51But with its vulnerable, liquid-cooled engine, the P-51 was replaced as quickly as possible with more modern jet aircraft.
51:59Today, the once mighty horde of Mustangs that conquered the skies of Europe has been reduced to less than a hundred flying examples.
52:13Every year at air shows throughout the United States, these precious relics take to the air before crowds of thousands,
52:19reminding Americans of our proud aviation heritage and those grueling days when Mustangs filled the skies in a desperate fight for freedom.
52:29Never had anybody say they didn't want to fly. In fact, it was just the other way around.
52:38People hanging on my back saying,
52:41Come on, he flew yesterday. I want to put me on the day.
52:46Does that mean it was fun? No.
52:49It's dead serious.
52:51We did every job we were given the entire war and did them well.
52:57It cost us a lot of people.
53:00It was another way you prove that what Sherman said was right, that war is hell, and it is.