- Introduction & Background
The World War II U.S. Army P51 Mustang fighter was him. He is the Cadillac of fighter jets. Its fuselage design is simple and compact, with a laminar flow wing profile, standard wing thickness ratio main wing and five-section flaps (the control surface was also improved later to achieve good and uniform control quality from low speed to high speed). Provides excellent flight performance. The oil and cooling water coolers extend forward from the tail to the underside of the wings. Since the coolers are not installed on the wings like the Spitfire and other fighters, it has a larger fuel load than ordinary fighters. . Due to policy and quota issues, the early P-51 did not have a turbocharger available, so it was equipped with an American-made Allison V-1710 first-stage supercharger engine.
Although the V-1710 is relatively solid, it is actually damage-resistant and has a high success rate. Supplemented by the Mustang's fuselage design, the early Allison Mustang has quite outstanding low-altitude performance. However, the lack of a two-stage supercharger meant that the P-51 had to face the problem of insufficient horsepower at high altitudes, which also made the high-altitude performance of the early models unsatisfactory. Although the early Allison-powered Mustangs were once the low-altitude speed kings in Europe at that time , but could not adapt to the mainstream high-altitude and high-speed air combat ecology in Europe at the time, and could only play a secondary role in low-altitude and high-speed reconnaissance and strafing. It was not until 1942 that the P-51 began to be replaced with the British-made Merlin engine. The performance of the P-51 began to improve by leaps and bounds, winning a large number of orders for it. Between 1943 and 1944, it caught up with the Allies' most important long-range escort needs, inheriting the P-38 and The P-47's achievements and expansion quickly reversed the balance of combat power over the European continent, and finally won the reputation of "the greatest fighter in history."
