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P-51D With Working .50cals

The only bad thing about this video circulating around as much as it has, is the fact that NO, it doesn't fly with active .50's, and it only had active .50's on this one occasion...something that every time this video is shared, is never clarified. (Also, I personally cannot stand the "War History" website - they steal all of their stories from other people/sites, and their own work makes them sound like a bunch of teenagers reporting this stuff).

This took place back in the summer of 2011, right after the restoration was completed and the aircraft was delivered to the Fagen Fighters WWII Museum. This was ahead of Oshkosh 2011 (where it won the Oshkosh WWII Grand Champion award), and working .50's were installed, having been produced with all of the permits required by the ATF in-place. Some members of the ATF were also present on the day the guns were installed, bore-sighted and fired. Before the aircraft flew again, the firing mechanisms within the guns had to be removed and the non-functioning guns reinstalled. One of the cool things about all of this, is that the owner, Ron Fagen, also owns a major construction/earth-moving business, so he was able to just bring in some of his guys and bulldoze out a firing pit for the Mustang for this one occasion (the firing pit has since been transformed into a WWII German bunker, as I recall from my last visit to the Museum).

There are quite a number of restored Mustangs and other fighters, like Twilight Tear, that everything is functional when in-flight/operation, but for the guns themselves. For instance, on many of these modern restorations, although the guns don't have the working mechanics inside them, the gun-firing solenoids, wired to the trigger, you can still hear clicking away when you pull the trigger in the cockpit. The only warbirds that I know of that have actually flown with working .50's in modern/recent years is a P-40 in New Zealand, which fires blank rounds, and the Collings Foundation B-24 and B-17, during their annual WWII Bombers Weekend event, will usually have at least one working .50 mounted in the waist, to fire blank rounds.

While in the US, one can go through all of the paperwork and potentially legally install working machine guns on a WWII aircraft and fly it, you would be bound to the restrictions of the State you are permitted in, and it wouldn't be legal to fly into or even over a neighboring State, without even more paperwork/permits, etc., let alone cross-country.
 
Dang....
I just noticed that JT is almost 30yrs old....What happened to that 16yr old kid that I met? :dizzy:
 
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