Originally Posted by
eggplantwalking
The guy did about everything wrong and doesn't know the best glide speed in the P-51 with gear and flaps up is 175MPH, not 150MPH. Additionally, the dash one calls for the canopy to be jettisoned in this case, and it weighs about 40 lbs, not 300lbs. The video clearly shows his problem and it is a fuel issue with fluctuating pressure. The normal fuel pressure in flight is 16 to 18 pounds. The fuel pressure drops significantly in the video but the pilot doesn't seem to notice this and its correlation to loss of power. It appears that he attempted to switch tanks and this should have cured the pressure problem as each tank has an electric fuel pump submersed in it. However, the fuel tank pumps will not come on line, if the boost pump switch on the engine control panel is not selected to the "ON" position as it is wired in series with the fuel tank selector. Additionally, he could have tried holding the engine primer switch down which would put fuel directly into the induction manifold and give him partial power. With a few hundred hours in the Mustang I disagree with most of the decisions made by the pilot, but at least he walked away and that's a big deal.
I think you are being a bit harsh. He had 104 seconds to deal with the emergency, and he did switch switch tanks. He was IMHO pretty forthcoming about his mistakes but the bottom line was he turned away from the runway that was
right there
but was in reality not reachable and flew the airplane to a successful forced landing instead of a stall-spin fatal with a destroyed airplane. No injury to him and an aircraft that will fly again, I am OK with that.
Do do you really think you would have done better ?