Dale wrote:

In article ,
"G.R. Patterson III" wrote:

orary fighters.

The balance problem is caused by the aft fuselage tank. Many Mustangs have
had
this removed. In any case, you won't need to fill it unless you're planning a
1600 mile trip. Stall speed in military configuration was about 95, which
isn't
out of line with other fighters of the era and is actually a bit lower than
the
Bf-109. I've read, however, that the plane doesn't give warning before the
stall
and drops the left wing dramatically when it does. Len Deighton claims that
few
military pilots three-pointed the Mustang because that gets you too close to
the
stall speed. Some years back, I got to watch 52 of these planes land at Sun'n
Fun. Every landing was a wheel landing with the tail slightly low.


I only have 1 hour in a Mustang, but when doing stalls it gave plenty of
warning with the stall occuring at about 81KIAS. We did not however do
any accelerated stalls.

That's interesting about 'little warning' and dropping the 'left'
wing. I'm only familiar with some heavies and they all gave lots
of warning, very 'fine' buffeting progressing to coarser and
higher amplitudes before the 'real thing'. Also they all six
dropped the 'right' wing. Would that be a function of the prop
rotation direction? I notice that all six had right hand
rotation, does the Mustang have left hand rotation?, or is it
some other factor that causes this?.
--

-Gord.