Corgi AA27708 USAAF North American P-51D Mustang Fighter - "Jersey Jerk", Major Donald Strait, 356th Fighter Group, RAF Martlesham Heath, England, 1944 (1:72 Scale)
"The Mustang was a good fighter and the best escort due to its incredible range, make no mistake about it. It was also the best American dogfighter. But the laminar flow wing fitted to the Mustang could be a little tricky. It could not by any means out-turn a Spitfire. No way. It had a good rate-of-roll, better than the Spitfire, so I would say the pluses to the Spitfire and the Mustang just about equate. If I were in a dogfight, I'd prefer to be flying the Spitfire. The problem was I wouldn't like to be in a dogfight near Berlin, because I could never get home to Britain in a Spitfire!"
- RAF Chief Naval Test Pilot and C.O. Captured Enemy Aircraft Flight Capt. Eric Brown, CBE, DSC, AFC, RN, after testing the Mustang at RAE Farnborough in March 1944
No other aircraft of WWII could fly as high, go as far, or fight as hard as the famed Mustang. Piloted by a record 281 Aces, this agile and ferocious dogfighter tallied more kills than any other Allied airplane. As the bombers of the Eighth Air Force fought their way deep into Hitler's Germany, it was the Mustang that cleared the skies of Luftwaffe fighters. The powerful Rolls-Royce Merlin engine gave the Mustang a speed of 445 mph. Re-styled with an aerodynamic bubble canopy for greater visibility, and outfitted with 6 fast-firing .50 caliber machine guns, the P-51 became the best fighter of the war.
Following combat experience the P-51D series introduced a "teardrop", or "bubble", canopy to rectify problems with poor visibility to the rear of the aircraft. In America, new moulding techniques had been developed to form streamlined nose transparencies for bombers. North American designed a new streamlined plexiglass canopy for the P-51B which was later developed into the teardrop shaped bubble canopy. In late 1942, the tenth production P-51B-1-NA was removed from the assembly lines. From the windshield aft the fuselage was redesigned by cutting down the rear fuselage formers to the same height as those forward of the cockpit; the new shape faired in to the vertical tail unit. A new simpler style of windscreen, with an angled bullet-resistant windscreen mounted on two flat side pieces improved the forward view while the new canopy resulted in exceptional all-round visibility. Wind tunnel tests of a wooden model confirmed that the aerodynamics were sound.
The new model Mustang also had a redesigned wing; alterations to the undercarriage up-locks and inner-door retracting mechanisms meant that there was an additional fillet added forward of each of the wheel bays, increasing the wing area and creating a distinctive "kink" at the wing root's leading edges.
Other alterations to the wings included new navigation lights, mounted on the wingtips, rather than the smaller lights above and below the wings of the earlier Mustangs, and retractable landing lights which were mounted at the back of the wheel wells; these replaced the lights which had been formerly mounted in the wing leading edges.
The engine was the Packard V-1650-7, a license-built version of the Rolls-Royce Merlin 60 series, fitted with a two-stage, two-speed supercharger.
The armament was increased with the addition of two more .50 in (12.7 mm) AN/M2 "light-barrel" M2 Browning machine guns, the standard heavy-calibre machine gun used throughout the American air services of World War II, bringing the total to six. The inner pair of machine guns had 400 rounds per gun, and the others had 270 rpg, for a total of 1,880. The B/C subtypes' M2 guns were mounted with an inboard axial tilt, this angled mounting had caused problems with the ammunition feed and with spent casings and links failing to clear the gun-chutes, leading to frequent complaints that the guns jammed during combat maneuvers. The D/K's six M2s were mounted upright, remedying the jamming problems. In addition, the weapons were installed along the line of the wing's dihedral, rather than parallel to the ground line as in the earlier Mustangs.
Pictured here is a 1:72 scale replica of a USAAF North American P-51D Mustang fighter that was nicknamed "Jersey Jerk", and piloted by Major Donald Strait, who was attached to the 356th Fighter Group, then deployed to RAF Martlesham Heath, England, during 1944.
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Dimensions:
Wingspan: 6-1/4-inches
Length: 5-1/4-inches
Release Date: ?
Historical Account: "Jersey Jerk" - As far as distinctively presented Mustangs of the Second World War are concerned, few were as colorful as the machines flown by the 356th Fighter Group of the US Army Air Force. Flying out of RAF Martlesham Heath in Suffolk, just a short flight from Britain's North Sea coast, the group were colloquially referred to as the 'Martlesham Playboys' or, perhaps more understandably, the 'Blue Diamonds'.
After completing his flight training in the US, Donald J Strait arrived in England to fly the P-47 Thunderbolt in autumn 1943. A native of Verona, New Jersey, he proudly took the name of his home state into combat with the Luftwaffe in the skies above Europe, naming his aircraft 'Jersey Jerk'.
Achieving three aerial victories whilst flying the Thunderbolt, Strait enjoyed his most prolific period of combat success once his unit converted to the North American P-51D Mustang at the end of 1944.
Wearing the distinctive markings of the 356th Fighter Group, Captain Strait and his 'Jersey Jerk' scored a further 10-1/2 confirmed aerial victories in the final months of the Second World War, including a productive day on February 20th, 1945, when he dispatched three Fieseler Storch Luftwaffe observation aircraft in the same mission.
With a total of 13-1/2 aerial victories, Donald Strait ended the war as the most successful ace pilot in the 356th Fighter Group
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