World War II Database

1.  BILL says:
12 Mar 2009 06:42:28 PM

P-51 is armed with four 20mm cannons, the chin-mounted .50 caliber machine guns of the Mustang 1, were deleted.

2.  BILL says:
20 May 2009 04:23:41 PM

The last Allison-powered Mustang was the P-51A It was powered by the Allison V-1710-81 engine, and was very much like the A-36 but without the dive-bombing equipment or the chin-mounted machine-guns. It did carry the under-wing racks for bombs and external fuel tanks.
A total of 310 were built, fifty were sent to the RAF as Mustang II's and thirty five were fitted with cameras and designated F-6B's.

3. Tom says:
24 Dec 2010 01:18:12 PM

This is a P-51(no suffix), or Mustang 1a as the Brits called it. The P-51A is the one that followed, and is the one that was very much like the A-36 structurally and all that good stuff.

4.  Bill says:
12 Oct 2015 05:51:44 PM

North American P-51A armed with /4 x 20mm cannons w/125 rounds per gun. Photo is a publicity shot note that aircraft s/n has been deleted.

5. Tom Griffith says:
5 Nov 2020 10:37:40 AM

It took me 5 yrs to see this page again and, Bill, this is NOT a P-51A.

This aircraft came two models before the P-51A. It is, once again, as I said 10 yrs ago a P-51 (no suffix letter).

I will admit, that in 2010, I didn't know that the A-36A Mustang came in between this cannon-armed P-51 and the P-51A, so I was wrong, too.

This P-51 was NAA's model designation "NA-91" and only 150 were built under Lend Lease for the USAAC/USAAF, to be "loaned" to the RAF. The USAAC/USAAF "held back" or "repossessed" 57 or 58 of them for its own use because of the Pearl Harbor attacks of 12/7/1941.

Most of the NA-91s in the USAAF became P-51-2-NAs when cameras were added in a Milwaukee Mod Center. One, designated "P-51-1-NA" was camera-equipped by NAA as a "sorta prototype." One went to the USN for evaluation (it was NOT the P-51 that the USN had converted for carrier trials, BTW!).

Two of them stayed with NAA and were modified by replacing the Allison V1710 with a Packard Merlin V-1650-3, along with other required mods associated with the Merlin installation. They were designated "XP-51B" and were therefore the P-51B prototypes.

The other 92 or 93 of the 150 total units built went to the RAF as the Mustang Mk IA.

That's a thumbnail sketch of this cannon-equipped Mustang (which, BY THE WAY, was officially named "Apache" from the date of the contract signing in 1941, by USAAC and NAA, but the name became "Mustang" in mid-July, 1942.

How's that!

6. Anonymous says:
11 Jun 2021 01:17:55 AM

P-51 with 20mm Canons .