Super-Rare XP-82 Twin Mustang Flies Again After Decade-Long Restoration

Was stationed @ Ft.Lewis 85-86 living in Steliacoom. Know what you mean, used to see C-141’s coming in over the base for runway 34. Seemed like they always did their turn right over the Lewis Ammo Supply Point

5106 s. Oakes St in Tacoma was in the pattern.

A single Merlin sounds really neat. How do two sound ? Did you ever hear any synch mismatch ?

I'm a volunteer at the Valiant Air Command Warbird Museum where Tom keeps his B-25. He has lots of projects working right now. XP-82 is top priority, of course.

The -82 was conceived during WW2 when bases weren’t close enough to Japan for the current fighters of the day. Once Iwo Jima was taken & secured, P-51’s were able to make the trip but the -82 continued development.

From wiki: “This aircraft was accepted by the Army Air Forces on 30 August 1945, whose officials were so impressed by the aircraft, while still in development, that they ordered the first production P-82Bs in March 1945, fully three months before its first flight. The XP-82 prototypes, and production P-82Bs and P-82Es, retained both fully equipped cockpits so that pilots could fly the aircraft from either position, alternating control on long flights, while later night fighter versions kept the cockpit on the left side only, placing the radar operator in the right position.”

Have to remember that jets were still in their infancy, several P-80’s crashed including one that took the life of Richard Bong (the leading fighter ace in the Pacific), on August 6, 1945; the day of the dropping of the first nuke on Hiroshima.

Even w/the advent of the Korean War same five years later, jets were small in #’s w/limited range, so props were the plane of choice @ the start (large #’s of prop fighters w/an available pool (Active Duty & Reserve/National Guard) of pilots already trained. Jet training took a little longer as it was a tatoally new beast.