Individual letter on F/Lt. Frederick Hilley Bradford's P-51 Mustang MK.IV?

[Graham Boak]

The Mustangs would almost certainly have been delivered to the units with Sky spinners, but at some time coloured spinners were adopted to identify the units, presumably following 8th AF practice. I have never seen a proper listing of which units had which colour spinners, but I'd be reluctant to rule out the possibility of 65 Sq having red ones.

[Kjetil Aakra]

Many thanks for your comments all. Much appreciated.

I'll check with my sources again regarding the red spinner. I have the photos to which you refer, Steve, as well as some of those photos mentioned by Alex. I think it will be best to use them as a basis for the profile.

YT-F is as good a suggestion as any, at least I know of no other contemporary 65th Sqd. Mustang with that code.

Would it be possible to see scans of the article on 65th Sqd you mentioned, Alex?

The rear view mirror will be deleted, as will the antenna as it seems RAF Msutangs used a mast-mounted VHF. And I've made stupid error with the rudder outline which will also be corrected. Should stick to my Bf 109s and Fw 190s and not doodle with these allied fighters!! :-)

Thanks again, all.

Kjetil Aakra

[Kjetil Aakra]

Profiles have been updated slightly.

Kjetil Aakra

[Stein Meum]

Widespread practice among RAF Mustang Squadrons was the use of a red spinner by the S/L.Norwegian Mustang pilot,and later Wingco,Werner Christie said i started the practice while commanding 234 Sqn,but I have a feeling it had already been started by 234's previous commander.

Westenra's plane had a red spinner while C/O but when the plane was passed to Norwegian pilot Kristian Nyerrød the spinner was painted in another colour,possibly black.Unfortunately,Nyerrød could not remember what colour in an interview some 5-6 years ago.His memory was fading already at that time.

The Peterhead Wing had their Mustang Squadrons adopt a scheme incorporating several stripes.One of the Polish adopting red and white while 19 Sqn applied yellow and black.According to Dane "Ronnie" Rønhoff,the third squadron on the base was to have yellow and green stripes but this is unconfirmed.

Stein

[SteveB]

Apologies for the lack of precision in the wording of my earlier post. It was not my intention to state that 65Sqn Mustangs NEVER had red spinners. My comments were intended to make the point that as far as I know there is no evidence that 65Sqn Mustang IVs had red spinners when they were based at Peterhead.

Bradford was shot down on 11/4/45 and the discussion/profiles seemed to be about Mustang MkIVs and about operations from Peterhead. In the absence of photographs clearly it is wrong to rule out the possibility of any a/c having particular personal markings. However the photos in Roger Freeman's book were taken on 20/4/45 and the photo of ten a/c taxiing does not seem to show a single example of a dark coloured or red spinner they all seem to be either Sky or NMF.

It does seem to be the case that 65sqn and the other sqns of 122 Wing may have introduced red spinners (and retained the white nose band) on their Mustang IIIs when they were based at Funtington in May and June 1944. However there are a lot of photos of Mustang IIIs in the Polish sqns of 133 Wing from April 1944 onwards and none of those have coloured spinners and almost all of them show the full, white, type identity markings on spinner, nose, wings and tailplane. The photo of Westenra’s a/c FZ120/YT*J comes from the May 1944 period and the photos of FZ110/YT*S shows the a/c crashed in Denmark on 17/5/44. It is not clear whether red continued to be applied to spinners by 122 Wing during the invasion period and when they moved to ALGs in France. Available photos suggest that they had black spinners and the white nose band painted out (there are examples on the Australian War Memorial website).

There are photos of 65Sqn MkIVs in NMF from the post-war period when they returned South to Andrews Field that show a dark colour on the spinner and cockpit frame and this may be red.

Steve