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The Staff of SOH
Please see the most recent updates in the "Where did the .com name go?" thread. Posts number 16 and 17.
></o>></o>></o>></o>></o>lace w:st="on"><st1:City w:st="on">Dallas</st1:City></st1lace>. All of these aircraft, built too late to see action in WWII, had some details that were foreign to the Mustangs that had come before. These specific details, while not found on any Mustang that had seen action in WWII, would form the basis for nearly all F-51D’s that would be operating in the late 1940’s and 1950’s.<o></o>></o>lace w:st="on">Iwo Jima</st1lace>. The SCR-695 set had to be mounted where the battery had been on all previous P-51D’s, and that required the battery to be repositioned into the engine compartment, just forward of the firewall. This required a new vent scoop for the battery to be added on the port wing elbow fairing, and a battery drain line that exited under the starboard wing shoulder fairing.<o></o>></o>
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<o></o>></o>></o>></o>lace w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">U.S.</st1:country-region></st1lace> at the time (the ARC-3 had been originally introduced into the last couple hundred P-51D-30-NT’s manufactured). During the Korean War, this radio set showed up primarily in Mustangs that were assigned multiple tactical roles, such as fighter-bomber-reconnaissance. Mustangs that had been in storage or serving overseas during the late 1940’s did not have the ARC-3 set when they were called up for active duty in 1950 and beyond, and the amount of modifications those aircraft would received depended on whether they were immediately sent into action in Korea, or were completely overhauled first. When the ARC-3 radio set and BC-453-B receiver were installed, the SCR-522 radio set was removed, as was the APS-13 tail warning radar, BC-1206 beacon receiver, and mostly all associated panels, brackets, and controls that had been mounted along the right-wall of the cockpit. In their place, a large singular panel was installed for the ARC-3 radio, SCR-695 IFF set, and ARA-8 set controls, as well as a tuner control for the BC-453-B receiver, and a new panel that mounted the circuit breakers for all of the radios in-place of the old APS-13 panel.<o></o>></o>></o>></o>></o>
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lace w:st="on">Texas</st1lace></st1:State>, where they had been in outdoor storage following the end of WWII. Even as was noted in an original 1950 magazine article on this very subject, issued by North American Aviation, all of these aircraft pulled from storage had been built too late to see combat, and having been in storage for 2-5 years, each only had an average of about 100 hours on the clock. Four separate companies were contracted to take on the massive task of overhauling all of these aircraft, making them like new again. These companies were; Grand Central Aircraft Co. and Pacific Airmotive Corp., located in <st1:State w:st="on">California</st1:State>, Temco in <st1:City w:st="on">Dallas</st1:City>, <st1:State w:st="on">TX</st1:State>, and Lockheed Aircraft Service in Sayville, <st1lace w:st="on"><st1:City w:st="on">Long Island</st1:City>, <st1:State w:st="on">NY</st1:State></st1lace>. From Kelley Field, they were trucked to the Temco and Lockheed plants, but they were flown out to the Grand Central and Pacific Airmotive plants, having just had the systems checked over and a new battery installed. Once at the overhaul facilities, the aircraft were run through a remanufacturing process that saw them taken apart, down to their center spars, and then put all back together again, going back onto the flight line as good as new. When this process took place, the aircraft would receive new USAF markings and stencils, and all of the Technical Orders that had been issued prior to the overhaul were addressed. In some cases, the cockpits were also painted over-all black at this time (though there is yet to be any evidence why some received it and others did not (even from the same overhaul facility)). When the cockpits were painted black (something that the US military adopted in 1950, as their standard aircraft cockpit color, having previously been interior green), other parts were also repainted, and some cockpit stencils/placards redone, to ensure that there was enough contrast against the black paint, allowing all of the important items to stand out. One of the items I’ve noticed myself, is that when the cockpits were painted black, the canopy release handles always seem to have been painted yellow, where as when the cockpits were left interior green, the same canopy release handles were left red. So, even if you can’t see what the cockpit color is on a particular F-51, if you are able to see what the color of the canopy release handles are, it should be a good way of knowing if it had a black cockpit or a green cockpit (the same goes for many RCAF Mustangs, which were overhauled in the US before being sent to Canada (those that were part of the 1950 order)). Many F-51’s never had their cockpits painted black, and continued to serve on with the old/original interior green finish – while there are at least a couple of preserved 1950’s era Mustangs with black-painted cockpits (one at the USAF Museum, and another in Canada), there are several more, preserved from that same time period, that still retain interior green finishes.<o></o>></o>
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I really do like the RNZAF paint 
.. amazing detail , now were is my screwdriver , id need a need parts to fix my radio here 
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Sundog, there has been some ideas thrown around about how we might archive and present the information we've gathered through all of these projects, into one illustrated developmental history of the P-51D/K. It's always awesome to hear that our work has been used as reference material for scale modelers, as I always hope that they can be used as an accurate guide for such things - the great thing about flight sim, is that as long as the model is done accurately and true to form, you can have a reference material at any time, where in which you can stick your head into any area that you wish. What's really great to me with this project in particular, is that items like those ARC-3 and BC-453 post-WWII radio modifications, outside of the original technical orders, you are extremely hard-pressed to find any detail on them at all - for me, many aspects were like solving a puzzle (no drawings seem to exist of the shelf that the BC-453 mounts to, over the top of the SCR-522 radio, and there are no photos it seems that shows what this looked like at the base - in the T.O., however, it mentions the hardware required to mount that shelf to the radio rack frame, and the hardware called for would be used if the shelf had four mounting feet, so I modeled it that way and it might as well be correct). Now that they are recreated, in clarity, they could hopefully be used by someone trying to make an accurate scale model of a Korean War era or ANG Mustang.
On a side note, my Mom saw that I had 'liked' this page on Facebook, so she PM'd me some info about my Grandfather. Evidently, he worked at the Dallas plant during the 1940's, building Mustangs.
I never knew that. I always knew him as a Rancher with a bulldozer, who, in between razing cattle and growing watermelons, built stock tanks all over the North texas area.
Sorry for the deviation, just wanted to share
sorry just converted to the dark side, and one of my first buys was a WBS Mustang (Restored Part 2 pack).
