Boise Bee

[QuietOne]

As promised.





Don't know yet if I got any decent in the air shots. It was hot enough to give that hot asphalt smell to just about everything. The spotters had me hop on the tug with them for one of the flights, so I was out at the runway, but I really didn't feel like moving much.

[Mad Aussie]

P51 Mustang??

I gotta ask ... what IS that midship air intake for? With the engine up front it seems to me it must have another purpose other than cooling the engine or providing clean air for the carbs.

[QuietOne]

This is Mike. The midship scoop houses both the engine coolant radiator and the oil cooler. This was a defining feature for the P-51 Mustang. The P-40 Kittyhawk/Warhawk had the coolant & oil cooler directly under the engine, the Spitfire had the radiators in the wings. The coolant pipes in a Mustang run just under the cockpit floor, leading to a British nickname for the P-51, "The Hot Water Toilet". At least one civilian post WWII operator of the Mustang was scalded to death by a coolant pipe bursting in the cockpit, undoubtedly it happened to military pilots during combat as well. On the Spitfire and the Mustang, the radiator ducts are shaped so that the air heated by the radiators produces some thrust, under ideal conditions this would eliminate almost all of the drag produced by having the scoop sticking out in the airflow.
The "Boise Bee" is a P-51C. This was the version used in combat in Europe in 1943 and 1944. Most were expended in combat and training, post war they were scrapped or used up by civilians that discarded them as soon as they required any maintenance at all. There are only 10 to 15 P-51B and P-51C models left in the world. The "B" model was built in California, the "C" was built in Texas, this was the only real difference between them.

[Mad Aussie]

Thanks Mike. I didn't even think of remote cooling for that scoop. Nasty way to die.

[corporallouis]

She's a beauty for sure. I expect we'll see some of her posted on the Mustang photo sites on the net. Do you know if that was her original coloring?

[QuietOne]

She's a beauty for sure. I expect we'll see some of her posted on the Mustang photo sites on the net. Do you know if that was her original coloring?

I don't think so. My impression is that the paint scheme was to honor a local pilot, Lt. Col Duane Beeson. It's the paint scheme his plane had. I don't know what her original scheme was. I'll ask Mike when he gets home. I do know this restoration has taken a very long time.

[QuietOne]

This is Mike. I haven't seen any pictures of the plane from its time sitting the storage yard. The plane came from a large storage yard belonging to a guy that kept a bunch of these old planes, even when they were considered to be worthless junk. I can check with the owner, but all the old pictures I've seen so far the plane was either stripped or in zinc cromate green. At the time the aircraft was manufactured, it could have been the olive drab of the current scheme, or bare aluminum, as they transitioned to unpainted during the production run of this aircraft. It is unlikely this plane ever left the US, as it was obsolete when the war ended, and if it was overseas would have been scrapped there.