Impact of the P-51 Mustang essays

Impact of the P-51 Mustang essays Not until the advent of the North American P-51 Mustang fighter, and all of the improvements, benefits, and side effects that it brought with it, that the Allies were able to achieve superiority over the Germans. The Allies knew that they would have to drive German industry to a brink of failure in order to win the war. The problem was that all the factories, refineries, and other industry-related structures were located inland. This problem called for the use of bombers. In order for the bombers to be successful they would have to drop bombs harassed by AAA and be able to return on new missions in the hours or days to come. The problem again was that the Allies did not have this type of superiority so they could not use bombers without the threat of being shot down by the Germans, who kept on moving in. The Allies realized they would have to start destroying more German fighters. So the invention and development of the North American P-51 Mustang began to take place. In April of 1940, the president of North American Aviation, Dutch Kindleberger, visited the head of the aircraft division of the British Purchasing Commission, Sir Henry Self, asking him if he would like to purchase some bombers. Self was not interested but instead told him that Curtiss Company had a new fighter design but was too busy to build it. Kindleberger went to see Curtiss and bought their fighter design for $56,000. He promised Self to have the planes ready to fly by September 1941. The prototype of the NA-73 however, was ready in October of 1940 and proved to be of excellent design. It had a revolutionary wing design that allowed it to fly at high speeds without adverse compression effects. The engineers also worked especially hard on making the plane as aerodynamic as possible by making the fuselage as narrow as possible and sitting the cockpit low in the fuselage. When the NA-73 was mass-produced it was then called the P-51, and was p...