[ARC5] Was the P-51 Mustang unbeatable?

[Robert Eleazer]

The ability to fly upside down is a compeletly useless capability for a military aircraft.  No production military aircraft, from 1944 or 1984 or 2021 is capable of flying upside down for more than 10 sec. Interesting that the P-40 flight manual, the F-86 flight manual and the F-16 flight manual all say the same thing on that subject.

Acro display aircaft, such as the Thunderbirds F-16's are various civilian airshow machines are modified with inverted fuel and oil systems.

Early war Spitfires and Hurricanes could not dive after enemy aircraft because they had float type carburetors in their Merlin engines that could handle neither negative G nor the flood of fuel that accompanies pulling out of negative G. US built engines, including the Allison and US built Merlins had pressure type carburetors that essentially were a form of throttle body injection and could handle shoving over into a dive with no problem.

The odd thing about the Merlin engined P-51 was that it was a world beater but was equipped with the smallest dispacement front line aircraft engine of the entire war.  Even the Japanese Zero had bigger engine.

Wayne
WB5WSV         

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