Great piloting skills!

I hate to see vintage warbirds crash. They're pretty much irreplaceable nowadays, so when one goes down, it's lost for all time.

However, the pilot of this 61-year-old Australian-built P-51 Mustang did a great job. His landing gear wouldn't come down properly, leaving one undercarriage door partly extended. He circled the airfield for forty minutes, burning up fuel and letting ground control check it out visually, then came in for a belly landing on the dirt. Whilst the aircraft was damaged, it was minimally hurt, and it'll fly again. Great skills!

(This is one of the rare two-seater conversion Mustangs, and he had a novice with him who'd been given a flight as a birthday treat. I love his reaction!)





Peter