Essential and Dispensible WW2 aircraft.

The Amaurotean Capitalist wrote:

"Scott M. Kozel" wrote:

I would give a lot of credit to British efforts in the preliminary
design of the aircraft and its ultimate engine.

You miss the fact that the British were instrumental in keeping
Mustang production going and were instrumental in pushing continued
production alongside the introduction of the Merlin engine. Neither
of these initiatives came from the USAAF.

The USAAF examined the alternatives, and decided to build the P-51.
They wern't "pushed" to do anything that they didn't intentionally
decide to do.

When I said that the P-51 was a "predominently U.S. aircraft", that is
because its final design and production was in the U.S., that over
15,000 P-51 airframes were built by North American Aviation in the
U.S., powered by engines built by Packard in the U.S., with the raw
materials and labor provided from the U.S., and that the project was
paid for by the U.S. government.

I completely agree. And yet it wouldn't have existed, in either
Allison or Merlin-engined variants, without the British.

I'm not sure what is your point. It wouldn't have existed, without
the U.S., either, at least not in quantities that would have had any
measurable impact on the war.

As I said, the British efforts were in the preliminary design. It was
NAA and Packard that built over 15,000 of the main models of the P-51,
in the U.S.; the British did not do that.

Look, I'm not trying to make this a competetion of U.S. and British; I
merely stepped into this thread when someone questioned why the P-51
was listed under USA aircraft.