Surviving Mustangs
The list of surviving North American Mustangs is quite lenthy, but before delving into the survivors what is the definition of a Mustang. To understand this we need to look at the evolution of the Mustang, designed to a British specification by North American Aviation. Originally approached to Build the Curtis P-40 under licence for the British, there was agreement that a new design would be more appropriate and so the NA-73X was born. This was the original Mustang Mk I, at this point the British Purchasing Commission effectively ordered 320 off the drawing board.
Of the first batch of Mustangs, two were allocated to the USAAC – the serials allocated were 41-038 and 41-039 and the XP-51 had arrived. Originally armed with two .50 calibre guns in the nose and four .303 calibre wing mounted guns the Mustang Mk I (NA-73 and NA-83) became the Mustang Mk Ia (NA-91) in RAF service when the wing armament was changed to 4 * 20mm cannons. The a,b,c suffix being commonly used when there was a wing armaments change, particularly when changed within a version as here.
The Mustang Mk Ia was in production when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour, the USAAC withheld a number of the 300 Mk Ia Mustangs that had been ordered and these became the P-51-2 or the F6A in USAAC service. North American Aviation at this time was closely involved in the Rolls-Royce Mustang X project, to re-engine the Mustang with the Rolls-Royce Merlin 61 as used in the Spitfire Mk IX.
The above lineage brings us to the North American Aviation P-51A Mustang, on the way there was probably much in fighting among various factions – but essentially the P-51A was arrived at through British requirements and North American Aviation technical skills and manufacturing capacity, modified by British need.
There were over fifteen thousand Mustangs built of all variants, with a number still in active service until the1980’s. They were operated by many countries, even built in countries like Australia and Canada by the Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation.
How many still survive is a difficult question to answer, I don’t doubt that I will miss a few from the list. But to minimise the chance of this, the list will be broken into sections to make it more manageable as the largest group are the US registered aircraft – here they are all 211 of them.
The table below is the current list of surviving North American Mustangs on the US register as dated the 6th of August, these are all believed to be in a flyable condition although some of them may fly infrequently.
It is quite likely that the table will change from time to time, some will be added and in the event of accidents or sale some may be deleted – I will try and keep it up to date, any help would be appreciated.
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