Mustang Over the Tetons

Air Classics, Jan 2005 by O'Leary, Michael

Installing a panel, second seat, and a full set of flight controls was no small task but John and his crew entered the project with enthusiasm. "Basically, we were going to do something no one else had done, and that is always fun as well as challenging. Since we have done a fair number of Mustangs, the basic airframe was pretty straightforward. The canopies on the B/C are made up of hundreds of little parts but John Hinton was building up a canopy in Chino for Stephen Grey's aircraft and we were able to obtain a couple strategic pieces from John." As an aside, when we flew with Stephen Grey and the Hawk seen elsewhere in this issue, Stephen had an interesting story about the canopy. "John did a beautiful job on the canopy but, literally within a couple of days of receiving the unit at our Duxford base, a local walked in with a brand-new old stock B/C canopy he had found stored in the area and commented, 'I thought you might like this.'"

John pointed out that a restoration of such magnitude is not the product of just a single shop. "What I think most readers don't realize is the fact on how all the restoration shops help each other out. As we got deeper into the aircraft, we called upon the talents of the Hintons, Gerald Beck, Bob Odegaard, Craig Charleston, John Paul, Art Teeters - it's a wonderful brotherhood that is eager to share their experience and talent and we could not have done it without them."

A major milestone for the Pacific Fighters team came when the wing and fuselage of s/n 42-103293 were mated but then came the terrorist attacks of September 11th. "Because of the economy's down-turn from the results of the terrorist attacks we had a couple of stops on the project but we were able to get through these and keep making progress," said John.

Mike Nixon's Vintage V-12s had delivered a zero-time V-1650-7 and it was mated to the fuselage. "We did our first engine runs on Christmas Eve 2003 which was quite a thrill for all of us," recalled John. Several engine runs were carried out before the Mustang was rolled back into the hangar for final detail work and completion.

The first flight for the P-51C took place on 5 May 2004. Since John has performed so many post-restoration flights, he handles them in a very specific manner. "I totally disagree with pilots who will not raise the gear on a first flight - especially if the plane is a tail dragger. In my opinion, this practice endangers both pilot and aircraft. With the gear up, I know if something goes wrong I can put the airplane down on the end of the runway or off the runway without the fear of the plane turning over and burning. As an example, when I made the first test flight on a P-47, I got the gear up when the prop started to run away. If the gear had been down, the airplane would have dropped like a rock and impacted off airport, probably going upside down. As it was, with the gear up I barely had enough speed to fight the P-47 back around and get it safely on the runway.

"For the first flight, I took it aloft and orbited the airport (it should be noted that the second set of controls was removed for the flight test program and then reinstalled when all the test work had been done). I did preliminary checks to make sure everything was functioning and then landed after about 15-mins. On the ground, we went over the airplane carefully and pulled the engine screens to check for metal. Everything was fine. On the second flight, I stayed within the airport boundary and flew for 30-mins. With the third, I went a little bit away from the airport and flew for about 45-min. By the fifth flight, I was confident with the aircraft and climbed to 14,500-ft, did steep turns, clean and dirty stalls, put the nose down and accelerated to 280-kts with a couple rolls and then a high-G pullup. I repeated that process and then finished with a loop. We kept flying the plane until the end of June and put 22-hrs on the airframe. During this time, both Max Chapman and Lee Lauderback flew the aircraft."