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A restored WWII fighter with operational machine guns

submitted by SFOGuy

1 decade 2 months ago

Fully restored P-51s are rare enough birds; fully restored with six working .50 caliber machine guns, never in my knowledge.

But this guy, who runs his own Aviation Museum in Minnesota, pulled it off. Apparently, it required getting a full license from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms as a machine gun armorer---then the modification and installation of six machine guns in the wings of the P-51.

You can see the aircraft rock backwards as the tester fires short bursts (no tracers) into a range target. The elevation looks slightly off, but that could be easily enough corrected.

Interesting sidelights:
--This exact aircraft had 3 kills in WW-II; two ME-262 jets (probably landing) and one ME-109.
--As I recall it, expert marksmen would set their machine guns to "converge" into a cone at about 200-250 feet ahead of their plane, so that the concentrated bullets would "buzzsaw" through an enemy fuselage; less accurate marksmen would leave their guns in a wide dispersion pattern to ensure at least some hits.
--In its day, the P-51 was a marvel; it had a laminar flow wing (super efficient, long range) and even the hot air exhaust flowing out of the engine bay was engineered to give it a bit of thrust that added a little more speed.

http://www.fagenfighterswwiimuseum.org/aircraft/tt/tt.html

6 Comments

*promote

Self promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued Sunday, October 19th, 2014 9:24am PDT - promote requested by original submitter SFOGuy.

The P-51 is one of the most beautiful machines ever built, IMHO.

While there's no arguing that its cause was just, its job was still an ugly one. I'd much rather see it fly than fire its guns.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'P51, Fagen Fighters, Restoration' to 'P51 Mustang, Fagen Fighters, Restoration' - edited by xxovercastxx

I agree; I was just startled that someone could even do this; and for purposes of the Sift, to see the 6 machine guns actually firing---that's sort of amazing. In terms of rounds fired, 6 together would be the equivalent of one Gatling gun now, I think. (6X500 rounds per minute = roughly equal to a burst from a GE minigun?)

The P-51 is one of the most beautiful machines ever built, IMHO.

While there's no arguing that its cause was just, its job was still an ugly one. I'd much rather see it fly than fire its guns.

Enjoyed seeing this video as many years ago I used to work on the P-51 in the Air Force Reserve. this brought back a lot of memories. I recall seeing Twilight Tear 463864 out at the Gathering of the Mustangs in Sept 2007 and was attracted to it as at that time it appeared as it been really used. Most of the others appeared fresh off the production line - pretty, but actually too pretty and that isn't the way it is supposed to look - in my view. The owner at that time was Stephen Gray. Is he still the owner?? In this video the aircraft also appears to have undergone some additional restoration - is that so?? If so, is there any other write-ups on the restoration?? Are there any other videos of Twilight Tear available?? Where is Twilight Tear now based?? Thanks for any additional info.

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