The North American P-51 Mustang is surely one of the most recognizable aircraft of World War II, thanks in large measure to the foresight of Lt. Col. Thomas J. Hitchcock Jr. When the US Army judged him too young to enter military service at age 17, Hitchcock joined the French Lafayette Flying Corps to serve in World War I. Early in his career, he had accumulated three aerial victories before being shot down and captured by the German army. Nothing short of resilient, Hitchcock would later break out of captivity and jump from a moving train, then trek more than a hundred miles to Switzerland.
After the war, Hitchcock became a polo-playing member of high society, an investment banker, and a socialite, even serving as inspiration for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s character Tom Buchanan in “The Great Gatsby.” When World War II broke out, Hitchcock again went into service, this time securing a commission in the US Army Air Force. Though he wished to take command of a fighter squadron, at age 42 he was judged too old for combat roles.
Appointed Assistant Military Air Attaché in London, Hitchcock played an important role in the Mustang’s development. In April 1942, Rolls-Royce test pilot Ronald Hawker flew the Mustang-then fitted with the Allison engine-and, though this plane showed very good performance at low and medium altitudes, felt that its high altitude capabilities could be vastly improved with the Rolls-Royce Merlin 61 engine. This hypothesis was immediately tested by the British, who fitted five Mustangs with the Merlin engine. Sure enough, the resultant speed topped well over 430 miles per hour at 30,000 nearly 100 miles per hour faster than the Allison-powered counterpart.
Hitchcock’s subsequent report to Washington in the fall of 1942 recommended immediate development of the P-51A into a high-altitude fighter by replacing the Allison engine with the Merlin. He felt that the Merlin-powered Mustang would be the best fighter operational during 1943. At this point, the US Army Air Force ordered 2,200 of the new P-51Bs fitted with the Merlin engines; the following year, the 354th Fighter Group would be the very first operational unit in the European Theater of Operations to receive these engines. With its range extended by external wing tanks, the Mustang escorted B-17 and B-24 bombers deep into Germany, protecting the bomber crews in those planes with lethal precision.
By early 1944, with a greater sense of confidence, and an aggressive new air tactic, the Mustang started to turn the tide of the air war in favor of the Allies. During “Big Week” in February of 1944, Mustang pilots destroyed 17 percent of the Luftwaffe’s experienced fighter pilots in air-to-air combat. Success did come with its own cost for the Mustang; its external wing tanks provided stability issues while diving with them attached. It was during this period Hitchcock, as Deputy Chief of Staff of the 9th Air Support Command, took the initiative to tackle the problem. The pilot later died after flying the aircraft near Salisbury, England, in a test flight on April 18, 1944, due to a crash.
Hitchcock did not live to see the full impact of the P-51 Mustang in securing Allied air supremacy, which was an important prerequisite for the success of the Normandy invasion just two months later. However, by March of 1944, when Mustangs escorted the first US daylight bombing raids on Berlin, Hitchcock’s vision regarding the aircraft had been fully accomplished.