<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: SS427</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Here is an old shot of a P51H still in it's civilian color scheme. </div></div>
That airplane later went to the Whittingtons. I think it was Bill who was flying it at Reno '78 when he had, I think, a propeller governor failure during the diving start to the Saturday heat race for stockers. He swung wide to land west on runway two-six but was very 'hot' on approach. Got the gear down and flaps but floated almost all the way down the runway before pushing it down onto the main wheels. It came right at us, bumping along on the dirt road that was the west extension of two-six, and about 200 feet from the barbed-wire fance he ground-looped it to stop it from hitting the motor home parked on the other side of the fence--that had people on its roof watching the show. I remember the sound it made as it bounced along the dirt road at 80+ mph, tail still high and fuselage level with the ground (fast enough to keep the nose down to see the road). Big cloud of dirt, canopy slides open, pilot tosses helmet out front of the left wing in disgust. Original H-prop, a paddle-blade Aeroproducts unit unique to the H, was ruined. The Whittingtons got it flying again a few years later with a strange Rotol five-blade prop. That British scheme was bad enough on the H and the five-blade makes it even tougher to look at now. Oh, and the people on the motor home panicked and started jumping off the top as the Mustang came down the road right at them. One older lady compound-fractured her leg and I think a couple others suffered leg injuries.
I took these with my Polariod camera that you had to pull the photo out, wait 60 seconds, and then peel the paper back to see the picture.
Maybe ten minutes after the fire truck got there and sprayed foam on the airplane.
Sunday morning waiting for someone to come hoist it onto a truck.
