From Platinum Fighters.
We recently pulled P-51D N38227 out of the hangar for the first time in 30 years. This airplane is in the same condition it was when it flew with the Guatemalan Air Force over 45 years ago. Sold with the worlds largest private inventory of Merlin engines and P-51 airframe parts – many New Old Stock.
You can always sit in it and make engine and machine gun sounds…
Last flown in 1983, Platinum Fighter Sales has an original and unrestored multi-owner P-51D Mustang up for grabs.
Known as the “Cadillac of the Sky” in World War II, the P-51 Mustang fighter was the mount of choice for several U.S. Army Air Force aces including Chuck Yeager.
The aircraft at hand, S/N 44-77902-N38227, was built in 1944 and carries the famed Packard Merlin V-1650-7 piston engine with Rolls-Royce 620 Heads and a few truckloads of spare parts including what look to be several spare canopies, blocks, wing segments and the like.
“This may be the last original unrestored P-51D Mustang in original military configuration,” notes Platinum, advising even the armor plating is still installed.
The plane flew with the Guatemalan Air Force between 1954-1972 and was returned to the States afterward, but has been in storage since the Reagan Administration.
If it surprises you that the Guatemalans flew the P-51 for so long, keep in mind that the last piston-engine dog fights, that of the Soccer War between fellow Central American military powerhouses Honduras and El Salvador in 1969 involved Mustangs and Corsairs.
Price? $4.5 mill. But hey, it’s a P-51. All you need are a half-dozen M2 Brownings for the wings are you are set.
wwiiafterwwii has a great and very detailed article about the P-51 Mustang and its use after VJ-Day. Whereas the Navy shed their F6F Hellcats and the Army Air Corps scrapped their P-38, 39, 40, 47 and 61 fleets wholesale, the National Guard and (after 1947) the Air National Guard kept the Mustang around for a generation.
And it is filled with excellent photos of piston-engined fighter bombers in an age of F-86s.
A 1947 recruitment ad for the Army National Guard featuring the P-51 Mustang
F-51D Mustangs of the Utah, California, and Nevada ANGs in 1948– all part of the 144th FG
P-51 mustang pilot of the North Dakota ANG in 1953, wearing Korean War-era helmet and flight suit 119th Fighterwing, North Dakota, 1953
Minnesota ANG F-51D Mustang, 1953
Some of which were kept in service due to local limitations on jets.
From the article:
One of the factors that gave the Mustang a long life in West Virginia was that, as late as the mid-1950s, Kanawha Airport lacked the ability to land jets. In December 1955 the 167th moved to newly-expanded ANG Base Martinsburg, but continued flying F-51s while it’s jet successor was selected by the Pentagon. In 1957 the squadron (the final American unit still operating the WWII Mustang) converted to the F-86 Sabre.