Three Beautiful Mustangs

[cflord]

Here is a pic of three (Janie, Maninell, & Big Beautiful Doll) of the best looking P51s still flying:



Keep the shiny side up and the dirty side down!

Ret SMSgt Cliff Lord - C-130 Flight Engineer & Mechanic

[matt_smith]

That is nice a photo.

[Lewis - A2A]

Yup that sure is a beautiful image, I wonder where it was taken.

cheers,
Lewis

[shipdriver]

Every time I see 'Big Beautiful Doll' I think of the video of it colliding with the Skyraider and the pilot's chute miraculously opening at about 500 ft.

[Bomber_12th]

Yeah, unfortunately that "Big Beautiful Doll" was the one that was a write-off in the incident at Duxford back in 2011 - though with the way rebuilds go today, it is almost a certainty that she'll be flying again in the future (new airframe built using the original identity). Of course there has still been another "Big Beautiful Doll" flying here in the U.S. as well since the mid 90's, which unfortunately had to make a belly-landing last year - it should be flying again by the end of this year, unless more work is planned beyond just the repairs.

"Janie" and "Marinell" are of course the two Mustangs owned by Maurice Hammond, as part of his "Hardwick Warbirds". The restored "Marinell" is often cited as being the original wartime aircraft, now restored and flying. However, the "Marinell" airframe is all new-build, and is actually a clone of "Janie" (when you delve into the details, you can tell that they built it up to be identical to "Janie"). The original "Marinell" was an Inglewood-produced P-51D-5-NA, the very first D-model variant, built in early 1944. The airframe that is painted as "Janie" was one of the very last P-51D's ever built, a P-51D-30-NT, built in late 1945 at the Dallas plant, that served with the RNZAF. There are literally several hundred differences between the P-51D-5-NA and the P-51D-30-NT. The restored "Marinell" airframe shares everything in common with the P-51D-30-NT "Janie" (including some details that only that variant had), and doesn't have any of the D-5-NA details/traits. I only mention this as I think it is interesting in its own way.

[n421nj]

Almost looks like rex soft clouds