F-82 — The Twin Mustang Survivors (2024)

Of all the odd and wacky aircraft ideas that were dreamed up duringWorld War II, the North American P-82 has to be towards the top of thelist. In the air war with Japan, USAAF planners realized that they were going to need ultra long duration fighter escort planes to flyto Japan with the B-29 bombers. Since the P-51 was a great long rangeescort fighter, it only made sense that two of them joined at the hipwould be an even better long range escort fighter. As it turned out,the Marines captured islands close enough to Japan that P-51 Mustangswere easily able to escort B-29 bombers all the way to Japan, so theP-82 project was put on the back burner.

At first, the idea for the Twin Mustang was pretty simple. All you dois bolt two P-51's together with a piece of straight wing, and there yougo. In reality, all the extra fuel needed for the long range missionslead to increasing the length of the fuselage. The higher weight meantthat the wings had to be stronger. All this extra weight and powermeant that the control surfaces needed to be larger. In the end, theP-82 had less than a 20% parts commonality with the P-51 mustang.

While a number of variants were built, the typical P-82 had a 51 foot 3inch wingspan, was 38 feet 1 inch long, and just shy of 15,000 poundsempty. Gross payload was about 10,000 pounds. The flight numbers wereimpressive for a propeller driven fighter, max speed of 485 miles per hour,service ceiling of over 40,000 feet, and a rate of climb of 4000 feetper minute. While the USAAF, and later, the newly formed US Air Force,wanted jet fighters, they were slow coming off of the assembly line.The Air Force saw the P-82 as a solution to the problem as an interimfighter to be used until jets were more widely available. Once theUSAAF became the USAF in 1947, the P-82 was redesignated F-82, withthe F being for Fighter, as opposed to P for Pursuit.

The F-82 went into front line service with SAC in 1948. They were quicklyreplaced by jet fighters, so the Twin Mustangs were sent to air defensecommand units in 1949. By early 1950, after only 2 years of service,the F-82 were relegated to reserve status. But, as fate would have it,the war in Korea broke out in June, 1950, and a group of F-82 TwinMustangs were based in Japan. As it was, the F-82 was the only aircraftavailable in the Pacific that could cover all of Korea from bases inJapan. This was extremely lucky given that North Korea rapidly overranalmost all of South Korea, including the US air bases. The first threeNorth Korean airplanes shot down by the US were claimed by the F-82. Thelast F-82 Twin Mustangs were retired in 1953.

A total of 273 Twin Mustangs were built. Four complete airframessurvive, with two possibly being flyable. The big issue with flyingthe F-82 is that the two engines spin in opposite directions. Theleft rotating engines are all but impossible to find, and the lefthand propellers are no longer available. The Confederate Air Forcehas been looking for a left hand propeller for nearly 20 years.