The unmistakable sight and sound of the North American Mustang is just eye candy for little boys to old men. Sadly there are not too many men still alive to recite their stories of flying these planes. The Mustang's birth came from a wartime requirement and in a very short time scale too.
This aircraft was built at North American Aviation's huge factory in California late in 1944 before being delivered to the USAAF in December that year. Early in 1945, the fighter was crated up and shipped to the UK to join the Eighth Air Force's Duxford-based 78th Fighter Group - one of 60 brand new P-51 Mustangs delivered to the 78th Fighter Group as replacements for the Group's P-47 Thunderbolts.
Read the story of just one of these warbirds - known as Twilight Tear.
The aircraft was assigned to Lt Hubert "Bill" Davis who called it Twilight Tear and flew the bulk of his 35 combat missions in it, scoring three aerial victories and one damaged. Twilight Tear remained at Duxford until the end of the war and was then flown to Speke, near Liverpool in July 1945 where she was handed over to the American Assembly Unit Number One for storage. In the late 1940s, the Swedish government purchased a number of surplus Mustangs from the USAAF to equip the Flygvapnet (Swedish Air Force) and Twilight Tear was one of the Mustangs purchased and ferried to Sweden via Scotland. She stayed with the Flygvapnet until 1953 when the Mustangs were phased out. Once more, Twilight Tear was up for sale and this time, was purchased by Henry Wallenburg and Co and ferried to Israel, via Athens and Rome.
Upon arrival in the Middle East, the Mustang was allocated a new identity and served with the Israeli Defence Force until being retired in 1961. Twilight Tear's whereabouts are then unknown, although it is thought she was placed in storage, until March 1978 when she was spotted on static display outside at Herzlia. A former Israeli Defence Air Force pilot, Israel Itzhaki, duly acquired the Mustang and decided to restore her to airworthiness. With some help from several American collectors and despite limited resources, Itzhaki restored Twilight Tear to airworthy status and the aircraft remained in Israel.
In December 1986 Itzhaki decided to sell Twilight Tear, and The Fighter Collection's Founder Stephen Grey inspected and test flew her on behalf of the Swedish company FlygExpo. The aircraft was duly ferried to Malmo in Sweden and painted in full Swedish Air Force markings. She remained in Scandinavia until acquired by the Duxford-based Fighter Collection in April 2002.
It was whilst the aircraft was under-going a thorough over-haul and maintenance work in The Fighter Collection's workshops at Duxford that her true identity was discovered and subsequently verified by Stephen Grey, who went to great lengths to prove the provenance of this historic Mustang - Twilight Tear had come home.
http://www.wimbornemac.org/articles/68-fact-files/118-mustang-twilight-tear#sigProGalleria1a0e77170f