Tony Seeley Photography

So tonight we have a great American plane, the Mustang P-51D.  The Mustang came into service early on in the Second World War and saw service over Germany and later in Korea.  Interestingly the Mustang was commissioned by the British and was designed and built in just 117 days.

Another (useless) fact is that the Ford Mustang car was actually named after this plane.  Executive stylist John Najjar at Ford was a fan of the P-51 and suggested the name.  Later Ford added the Mustang horse as the cars emblem.

This particular plane saw action over German in the hands of Captain Harrison Tordoff and participated in many air-to-air combats and shot down a German Me 262 jet fighter.  After the war the plane served with the Royal Swedish Air Force and after that was sold to the Dominican Republic.  After 30 years in the Caribbean the aircraft came back to US when it was purchased by the Flying Heritage Collection.

This plane was really cool and was almost polished steel.  The checkered nose and black and yellow propellers really set the plane off.  Just under the cockpit there were nine swastika’s showing how many German planes Harrison shot down.  A small plaque in front of the plane stated that Harrison Tordoff was reunited with his plane back in 2003 and stated it hadn’t changed since 1945.

This composition isn’t the best in the world, but as I’ve said before in other postings the planes were very close together and you don’t really have a lot of options.  But I really like this plane and think under the circumstances the picture came out well.

Master Chief learnt an important lesson today, Gorilla Glue is very sticky – and you shouldn’t play with it!

Tonight I thought I’d post another plane from the Flying Heritage Collection and chose this simply named Focke-Wulf FW 190 D-13 – yeah I know it’s a bit of a mouthful.

While I was there I was trying to find a different perspective for some of the pictures, you know what I mean, not just a side on shot of a plane.  Sometimes it’s interesting to see something familiar from a different angle.

So when I got home I looked at my images, and guess what?  I had a load of side shots of planes, or even more common, the shot from directly in front, looking at the propellers.   Wonderful!  Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with those shots, some looked good (and I’ll post them too), but it’s not exactly original.

But then I came across this D-13 and immediately loved the angle from the rear.  Having the tail so close and tack sharp in focus delivered I thought a great image.  Add to that great green camouflage and this plane looks cool.

You can probably see how close these planes are packed in the hanger so getting something different is a little challenging.  But fortunately there were lots of exhibits from the US, UK, Germany, Japan and Russia, so there was lots to choose from.

So what about the plane (got-a make it a bit educational).  This German design came quite late in the second world war and competed well against the US Mustang and the late model British Spitfires on even terms.

This particular plane is the only 190 D-13 that survived the war, the aircraft entered service in March 1945 and served as a commanders plane in “Fighter Wing 26”.

Carter and Master Chief wanted some nuts.  ‘nough said!