A World War II-vintage P-51 "Mustang" was introduced Wednesday as the newest addition to the aircraft display at the Hill Aerospace Museum.
The fighter has earned a reputation as the overall favorite during the war and was nicknamed "whispering death" by the Germans, said Rex Hadley, a retired major general and chairman of the Air Force Heritage Foundation of Utah.Some 14,819 Mustangs were built beginning in 1940. Pilots flying Mustangs are credited with shooting down 4,950 German fighters and destroying another 4,131 German planes on the ground.
Mustangs continued to fly into the Korean War era, including a group assigned in Salt Lake to the Air National Guard. But few of the famous fighters remain, and those still flying can fetch $500,000 to $1 million.
The Heritage Foundation, the fund-raising group for the museum, purchased its Mustang from a Southern California firm for $200,000 after it was restored to museum shape from a crashed aircraft and additional authentic parts.
Hill's Mustang sports the paint scheme of the 4th Fighter Group, which flew Mustangs out of Dux-ford, England. Hadley said the 4th Fighter Group's paint scheme was chosen for the Mustang because two Utahns commanded the group during the war: Santaquin native Chesley Peterson and Ogden resident Harry Dayhuff.
Dayhuff and several other former Mustang pilots, including retired Lt. Gen. Fred Poston, attended the Wednesday ceremony and watched the unveiling of the D-model Mustang.
Pilots who flew the Mustang and other fighters of the era debate the virtues of each aircraft, but pilots who flew both the P-51 and the P-38 often concede their preference for one or the other depended on where they flew it. Former P-51 pilot and astronaut Chuck Yeager, for example, told the Deseret News several years ago that all performance features aside, the P-51 had a better heater, making it more popular over the chilly skies of Europe while the P-38 remained more popular with pilots dogfighting with swift Japanese zeros in the Pacific.
The Hill museum has more than 60 aircraft on display and is currently preparing several more newly acquired aircraft for future display, including a Vietnam-era cargo plane once piloted by Utah Sen. Jake Garn during his tenure in the Utah Air National Guard.