Pat Flannery wrote:



MichaelJP wrote:
I wonder how many found it too much and came to grief - were there any
trainer versions of the P51D or was the first flight always the first
solo as well?


I don't think I've ever seen a trainer P-51, in fact most U.S. WW II
fighter didn't have a trainer version.
I assume that after you had done enough hours in a Texan trainer they
assumed you were ready to take on a Mustang, although I have heard of
some pilots training stateside in P-39s before moving up to P-47s or
P-51s overseas.
(Chuck Yeager for instance)

During the war there weren't any 2 chair P-51s (Except a few one-offs like
the 2-seat P-51B that was used by Eisenhower for direct recon of Normandy.)

There were some TF-51Ds put together after the war by Temco - They can be
spotted by their having the bigger F-51H fin & rudder, and a canopy shape
that gives a bit more rear headroom. Cavalier made some, as well -
including a couple delivered to the U.S. Army in the 1960s for use as chase
planes for the AH-56 Cheyenne Compound Helicopter.

But, backduring the War, the usual procedure before transitioning to a singe
seat fighter was to demonstrate proficiency in landing an AT-6 from the
read seat.
This gave the same lousy over-the-nose visibility, and the T-6's much
snarkier behavior on landing and rollout meant that if you could handle
that, you could pretty much handle anything.

Figher training (More of less what we'd call LIFT (Lead-In Fighter Training
these days) was typically performed in war-weary P-39s or P-40s. It was
considered part of the Advanced Single Engine syllabus.

The U.S. Aviation Training Programs, both Army and Navy, were some of the
most amazing miracles of WW 2. A lot of study went into syllabus and
methods - And the result was Pilots coming out of training in with 250-300
hours who could not only fly a fighter, but fly it on instruments, navigate
their way from England to Prague and back, and fight the Luftwaffe (or the
IJN) to a standstill when they got there.
Well, and the U.S. Aviation Industry, that could build fighters that could
not only fly from England to Prague, but take on the short-ranged
interceptors when it got there, and, if necessary, run them out of gas, and
fly home.
(The only German fighter pilots who got instrument training were the
NachtJagd. This was a factor in choosing bomber pilots to fly the early
jets - they could make instrument let-down in the usual crappy German
weather. An Me 262 didn't have the fuel on board to stooge around looking
for a hole in the clouds to descend through, or a VFR airfield.

Pete Stickney
Without data, all you have is an opinion