How One American Engine Swap Turned A Good Plane Into A War Winner

Описание: In nineteen forty two, a British test pilot named Ronald Harker took a thirty minute flight that would change aviation history forever. The North American P-51 Mustang was a brilliant American designed fighter aircraft with one fatal flaw, an engine that failed above fifteen thousand feet. When Harker suggested mating the Mustang airframe to the legendary Rolls Royce Merlin engine, he set in motion one of the most consequential decisions of the Second World War. This documentary tells the incredible true story of how Edgar Schmued designed the Mustang in just one hundred two days, how Tommy Hitchcock battled Washington bureaucracy to get the aircraft into production, and how the Merlin powered Mustang became the fighter that escorted bombers all the way to Berlin and back. Featuring the stories of legendary aces like George Preddy and Bud Anderson, the strategic vision of General James Doolittle, and the industrial might that produced over fifteen thousand aircraft, this is the complete history of how one engine swap transformed a good airplane into the fighter that won the air war over Europe. From the design rooms of North American Aviation to the skies over Germany, discover how American engineering brilliance and British powerplant supremacy combined to break the Luftwaffe and secure Allied air supremacy before D Day.