The Little World

I had no idea as a kid. ( I don’t have much more sense now. ) But I sure wish I had known about the F-82 Twin Mustang long before my old age. I might have been able to see one in real life – because they flew from an air base near to a city where I lived.

These were aircraft that were designed as very long range bomber escorts – for missions that were never needed in the end. They were left to languish until the times and the wars changed, and then they were thrown into Korea as stop-gaps. They stopped the all-weather night gap very well.

They were called to serve on the continental US as air defence interceptors when nothing else was ready. They could do the job and might well have caught intrusions from Russian Tupolev-4 ” Bull ” bombers some distance from the US coast. They were stationed in Washington state and Alaska against just this threat.

I have heard club people pooh-pooh them as a silly idea and a wrong shape, but I think this sentiment is driven by prejudice rather than logic:

a. The plane was twin-engined, which is a safety net for long over-water flight.

b. It was twin-crewed as well – one as primary pilot and one secondary. The No.2 was radar intercept man with basic flight controls and no gunsight. Enough for safe recovery of a plane.

c. The crew were separated by the twin fuselages. Not to be gruesome about it, but one burst of enemy fire could not take out both crew. Had Uncle Doug Peterkin and his navigator ” Spud ” Murphy been hit over St. Omer by a shell into the cockpit rather than elsewhere on their Mosquito, they would not have been parachuting down and I would not have been able to discuss the business with Doug in the 1970’s.

d. It was well-armed – six .50 Brownings in the center-wing with a straight field of fire. Or with 10 HVAR ‘s for daytime escort work.

e. It could carry a prodigious amount of extra fuel if the mission was very long. The version Monogram made has two external tanks, but they could carry four. That meant they could meet intruders a long way away from their base before any real continental damage might be done.

So I’m all in favour of the F-82. And if you want to hear me sing real fan-boy praises wait until I finally locate 1:72 models of the F-89 Scorpion or the F-101 Voodoo.