P-51H Mustang, Superprop!

My grandfather flew that prototype. It is one of my favorite stories from him. It was a ferry flight and they said to go get that P-51 and fly it out. He went out looked around the ramp and didn't see anything he recognized as a mustang. "You mean the thing with the damn buggy wheels?". Yes. That one. He shrugged and went out, went through the checklist, started, taxied out and took off. It pinned him to the seat. He said he was at about ten thousand feet before he caught back up. He said it was the best flying airplane ever and he flew all of them. He got to his location, made an overhead pass and started into the break. "Is that all you got?" Proclaimed the tower..."permission to clear the pattern..."asked Grandpa. "Permission granted". He re entered the pattern over 500 mph, pulled vertically and rolled out of sight, came back and landed. "Report to the tower on shut down". He was in a little bit of trouble over that but he felt the juice was worth the squeeze. Best prop plane he ever flew..

The breadth and depth of Greg's coverage is astonishing. Love these videos.

The fact you are willing to track down every bit of info you can to be as accurate as possible, while also outright stating when things are educated guesses at best, is awesome to me. And being as I am a technology and science nerd, and love all the engineering of the pre and post WW2 era and how quickly things changed in just 10 years, this channel rocks.

Hands down, the best place on YouTube to get your WW2 aircraft history fix… great work as always Greg!

There were two F-51H aircraft that crashed near where I grew up on March 10th of 1950, flying out of Lockbourne AFB with the 166th Fighter Squadron/121st Fighter Intercept Group. Flying them were Second Lt. Neal Diehl(serial number 44-64616) and Second Lt. William Drazic(serial number 44-64500). A group of five F-51H aircraft left Lockbourne AFB in Columbus, OH with intentions of flying to Selfridge, Michigan on a routine training excercise. Report was Lt. Drazic wanted to buzz his parents' house, which required flying East to Wintersville, Ohio from Columbus, a distance of about 125 nautical miles from Lockbourne field. Lt. Drazic reportedly accomplished buzzing his parents' house before an abrupt maneuver put his aircraft into Lt. Diehl's F-51. Air Force accident reports suggest Lt. Drazic's aircraft crashed to the ground one mile from Fernwood Rd, being killed without exiting the aircraft, and after the collision, Lt. Diehl would bail out of his F-51, nevertheless also losing his life, his aircraft being found three miles from Lt. Drazic's near a coal mining company. Both aircraft were "almost entirely unrecognizable." Lt. Drazic's F-51 was reported to still be burning two hours after the incident with his body still inside and Lt. Diehl being found, also badly burned, by the Ohio State Highway Patrol who first investigated the crash before a wave of military trucks showed up and recovered most of the debris. There are a ton of locals to the crash sites, who believe to this day, that I have talked to, that Drazic and Diehl were peeled off from the three other aircraft headed for Michigan, to investigate a "ufo sighting" during the lapse in official efforts to "chase" unidentified craft between Project Grudge and Project Blue Book, but I figure that simply would be way too coincidental seeing as how Lt. Drazic literally crashed near his own parents' house. People were alarmed by the secrecy and quickness of the military to keep people away from the wreckage and trying to keep anyone from seeing what had happened, rumoring that people had their cameras confiscated after the military showed up and that the two images published in the local newspaper were taken by Ohio State Highway Patrol before the military responded to the two crash sites. One fella I met claimed to know a guy to have a piece of one of the aircraft but refused to mention who or what exactly he had. Very creative imagination on some of these folks! There is currently a memorial at the Jefferson County Airpark (2G2) where a Steubenville Herald Star newspaper from March 11th, 1950 with front page article and before-mentioned images alongside an uncuffed prop, missing two of its four blades, "supposedly" recovered from the wreckage of one of the two above-mentioned F-51H aircraft, mounted to a display pole beside the newspaper in a glass box.

Sure hope you cover the Douglas Skyraider. It missed WWII combat but so did some other Super Props. It was designed during WWII and used the iconic B-29 Wright R 3350. Seems like in some ways the panicle of the Super Prop. And perhaps with best combat record.😎

The Superprop series are simply brilliant, nice work Greg.🛩

Greg: Many extremely great photos and great narrative. Lots of good info. Thank you to the max. I used to work at Half Moon Bay Airport back in the '60s and '70s. The guy who ran the place, Frank Sylvestri, had flown P-47s in WW2. His son, Paul, was a high school pal. I rode down there on my '50 H-D Panhead (still have her). One day we could hear a P-51 enter the pattern. The classic pop-pop of the the Merlin on final. Nice, no bounce landing. In it came, toward the gas pump. This action was enough to actually bring out the old man from the office. The pilot was a guy with his kid in the back, in a P-51H! I handed up the gas nozzle. All we had was 100-130, but who makes 130-145 any more? Anyway, they went inside and got their hunnert dollar hamburgers (plus, probably, a milk shake for the kid). They came back outside, fired it up and were outta there. Very cool. I gassed a P-51H!

Well, the P-51H was designed not only to be fast, but had very long range, too. It would have been used on attacks on Japan from Iwo Jima and Okinawa had Operation Olympic actually started in November 1945.

The truly crazy thing is private race teams are doing over 500 mph with P-51's at like 5000 ft. The true highest performing mustangs of all time are air racers like Voodoo which once recorded a pass at 554 mph

I'm going to say it. You are most probably the most important Aviation information Source on YouTube. Thank you.

Oh, my sweet Greg - never underestimate our interest in random niches of history. Seriously, you're so good at going in depth without wearing us out. Great content.

There is one of these that often flies into the Warbird Roundup airshow at the Warhawk Museum in Nampa Idaho. Tail number 464551. It's a bit plain looking compared to the colorful paint other Mustangs sport, but it runs great and it's neat to see such a rare bird flying around. It definitely does sound a bit different than other Mustangs.

Glad you covered the P-51H, there just isn't too much information out there on this highly refined version of the Mustang and you are right, all attention was focused on jet aircraft.

When I was a kid back in the 60’s I bought an Aurora 1/48 scale P-51 kit and was irritated that when I opened it the plane had the wrong shape. It turns out I had bought a now rare P-51 kit which for some reason wasn’t labeled as an H, the box said simply P-51. On eBay the asking price for one with the original issue box art is $250.

Modern diesel pickups have huge water-oil coolers. Ever increasing power and towing capabilities (and how common performance mods are) need ever bigger coolers.

Hey Greg. I'm 54 , have studied how to fly off and on all my life. Haven't got my pilots license yet . There's always something coming up. Life . I'm gonna try to do this soon . You've been a great teacher . Thanks man. Jeremy Wilson.

Thank you for this one Greg. My father was a P-39 instructor (this irritated him because he wanted to fight) during the war. He did deploy to Nuremberg in June 1945, flying the P-51D doing aerial recon vs. the Soviets. He also did military testing of the P-63. After the war, he was the first CO of one of Ohio's ANG Squadrons at Wright Patterson from 1946-1951. He had both D & H models of the P-51s in his squadrons. Thank you for the picture of the Ohio ANG Mustang in your video As usual; your presentation was fantastic.

Thank you Greg…What a Super way to start the day …!

Credit to NAA, they seemed to improve upon the D in nearly all areas. Cool to see the ANG period pictures, I like to see the various states on the planes.