Don Homuth wrote:

It was a remarkable aircraft without question. Though to be honest,
the sound of a RR Merlin 12 roaring by still is The sound of a WW2
warbird to me.

The P-51, Spitfire and Hurricane all shared that venerable sound.

Not directly related but reminds me of an apocryphal story. It's
interesting even if not true (and I suspect it's not). As the story
goes the Rolls-Royce corp started getting inquiries about, "what model
is that RR that passed me going so fast? After getting several
inquiries from all over western Europe they decided it wasn't
somebody's imagination, and RR got curious. Finally they determined
that the thing was out of Switzerland and identified its home. They
sent someone to ask the owner about it. They drove up to what was
literally a castle and parked what was supposedly the same model car
next to the one in question. The first thing they noticed was that the
one causing the ruckus was a couple of feet longer than the standard
model.

Well, they went inside and talked with the owner who assured them,
"Except for a few parts made in my own machine shop, everything on that
car is standard Rolls-Royce parts." As the story goes, the engine was
a Merlin, indeed made by RR.