P-51H

The museum's P-51H is one of the first airplanes the visitor would see upon entering the hangar, and seeing the Mustang gave me the first indication that the museum's closing was closer than had been announced: The only part of the plane which was immediately visible was the wings with landing gear (which was quite an unusual sight!).

I eventually located other parts of the plane, literally scattered around the museum: The propeller was in one location, the fuselage nearby, the engine fairing panels up against hangar support posts, the air scoop between two other airplanes, and the vertical stabilizer on a pile of pallets. I later found the horizontal stabilizer outside, under the wing of the C-47.

A crew was just finishing up moving and staging the fuselage when I arrived. I found that the crew was from the Museum of Aviation, who would be replacing their P-51 with the P-51H from Chanute; I was told that various fuselage parts on their Mustang were actually fiberglass reproductions.

While I was disappointed that the P-51 was not in one piece, it did allow a large number of interesting shots or parts of the plane which are rarely accessible.

Chanute had recently completed restoration of the Mustang, as detailed in this YouTube video.

A museum volunteer saw me taking detailed photos and warned me that the P-51H was substantially different than the P-51s used earlier in World War II, with up to 80% of the parts being different. So, while the photos of the aircraft's internal structure may be interesting, they may not be representative of the more common Mustangs out there.

The former Legends In Their Own Time once had a detailed page on the Mustang, including many technical diagrams; sadly, it looks like very few of those diagrams survived the Wayback Machine archiving process. Although most diagrams were for the P-51B, they were still very useful in identifying components on the P-51H while they were still online.