Re: NNG My Salute to The Veterans with restored Planes

Those must be the Collings Foundation airplanes? One of my wife's uncles flew P-51's during the war. He didn't arrive in Europe until late so only flew 6 missions before the war ended. I asked him how many hours he had in P-51's before he arrived; he answered "zero". He said that he sat in the airplane and his crew chief pointed out the controls (I think they were pretty much standard among all the US airplanes including trainers). He was teamed up with an experienced pilot before his first mission. His wing man pointed out a water tower some distance away. "Stay away from that" he said, "the Germans are over there and will shoot you down". After the end of the war he was a guard at the Nurnburg Trials. Interesting guy. He died 4 or 5 years ago.
I've often wondered why the B-24 didn't remain in service after WW2 especially since so many were built (18,000). When I saw it here in Phoenix I asked one of the Collings guy and he said that it wasn't very stable, so the pilots didn't like it as much as the B-17. Later that was corrected on the PB4Y, basically a B-24 built as a Navy patrol bomber by changin from dual rudders to a big single fin.
Very neat thanks for posting.