North American P-51 Mustang

In April 1940, the Mustang was developed by the North American Aviation design group led by James Kindelberger as a response to a need from the British Purchasing Commission to build Curtiss P-40 fighters under license. Instead of building an aged design, the manufacturing company proposed a modern fighter. The resulting aircraft was a trim low-wing monoplane fitted with an Allison piston engine. On September 9, 1940, the prototype designated as NA-73X was rolled out and on October 26, 1940, it made its first flight.

The P-51D version has an external length of 9.83 meters, an external height of 3.2 meters, and a width of 0.9 meters. The tail height is 4.08 meters and the wheelbase is 5.2 meters. It has a wingspan of 11.28 meters and a wing area of 21.83 square meters. The empty weight is 3,465 kg, the gross weight is 4,175 kg, and the maximum payload is 910 kg. The maximum takeoff and landing weight is 5,490 kg and the fuel tank capacity is 269 US gal.

The P-51D is powered by a single Packard V-1650-7 Merlin engine, a version of the Rolls-Royce produced under license by the Packard Motor Car Company. It is a twelve-cylinder liquid-cooled piston with two intakes and two exhaust valves per cylinder, a two-speed two-stage supercharger, twin-choke updraft carburetor with automatic mixture control, dry sump oil system, and seventy percent water and thirty percent ethylene glycol cooling system. The engine produces a maximum thrust of 1,490 horsepower at 3,000 rpm and 1,720 horsepower at war emergency power (WEP) and drives a four-bladed constant-speed variable-pitch Hamilton Standard propeller.

The aircraft has a maximum speed of 383 knots, a cruise speed of 315 knots, and a stall speed of 87 knots. It has a travel range of 1,434 nautical miles with external tanks and a service ceiling of 41,900 feet. It can climb at a rate of 3,200 feet per minute. The P-51D can be loaded with six 12.7 mm AN/M2 Browning machine guns, 450 kg of bombs, and six or ten 127 mm T64 H.V.A.R rockets.