The Mustang and the four-bladed Ryan story
The May 1995 issue of AOPA published a story by Dr Tony Fisher called "My Mustangs". It was wonderfully written story which I still have in my library.
A couple of years back I contacted Tony Fisher who lived in Tasmania and got his permission to update his story and have it published in Pacific Flyer magazine. I called the story "It wouldn't happen nowadays"
The opening paragraph of his story started thus:
"My love affair with a P51 started when I was approached by a non-ferrous metal dealer from Taren Point. He knew I had a PPL and asked if I would be interested in buying an aeroplane he had obtained by tender to melt down for pots and pans. The name P51 didn't mean a great deal at the time other than it was some sort of fighter. My first aeroplane was a Fairchild Argus which I bought from Sammy Dodd, who gave me my PPL.
I took my wife Helen to look at the Argus. She took one looked and claimed`you needn't think I'm getting into that thing. That's the old paper plane from Moree. My father went to Sydney once in that and said he could have got there quicker on a push bike`. That's what you get for marrying a nurse from Moree.
When the non-ferrous dealer mentioned the Mustang's 400 MPH cruise I thought of Helen's father on a push bike. I was sold. The price having been agreed upon was 300 pounds"
In fact Tony Fisher finished up owning two Mustangs based at Jerilderie I think. I left the RAAF in October 1969 and joined DCA. There were a few of us ex RAAF pilots behind desks there and bored fartless at the mind-numbing bureacracy. Bruce Clark an ex Hercules QFI was one of them and we had adjacent offices. One day he showed me a small photo from his wallet of him in the cockpit of a Mustang in a field somewhere in western NSW. The Mustang didn't have a canopy on it and seemed to be covered in bird droppings. .
The problem was lack of glycol coolant essential for the RR Merlin. So Bruce contacted a squadron mate who was a flight engineer at 36 Sqn Richmond and managed to get a few gallons of glycol brought down by car to the property. The Mustang owner knew Bruce was a RAAF pilot and invited him to fly his Mustang - albeit with no canopy. Bruce had never flown a Mustang but he had a few hundred hours on Wirraways which was near enough.
I too had flown Wirraways and also Mustangs and believe me if you could handle a Wirraway there was no real problem with flying a Mustang. In fact I had only 210 hours in my log book when I first flew a Mustang.
Bruce would drive from Richmond to the property (it may have been called "Canarney" which is 5000 acres at Jerilderie because that was where Tony Fisher had one of his Mustangs I think). Bruce Clark would do a few circuits in the open cockpit Mustang and then drive back to Richmond. A couple of other RAAF pilots had a go at it too.
Before completing this Pprune post I must add one more story in Tony Fishers article. Tony by now had a few hours on his Mustang. Previously he had only flown lighties and his Argus and a Ryan ST. He tried a short field landing in his Mustang at the homestead Canarney and ground looped. In his words:
"In sheer desperation I applied full right rudder. Round she went in a great cloud of dust coming to rest not far from the fence and the entrance from the main road. A passing motorist seeing the dust and commotion drove straight in and up to the aeroplane, just as was winding back the canopy.
"Are you all right, mate?'
"Course I'm all right" I claimed, not wishing to emphasise my predicament.
"I thought you'd crashed"
"No way, that was a normal precautionary short landing"
"Oh yeah"- he sounded a bit sceptical. "What sort of aeroplane is that?"
"A four bladed Ryan", I lied.
"How fast will it go?"
"400 knots"
"What's it worth?"
"Four hundred quid"
"I'm learning to fly next year. I was going to buy a Cessna, but now that I've seen one close up, I think I'll buy a Ryan".
PLovett
Centaurus, you are quite correct, the property was Canarney at Jerilderie. That is where I saw the second Mustang when I went there for the Canarney Cup in 1972, an aviation themed event over the Australia Day long weekend that included one hell of an air-race.
At the time Tony Fisher owned a Lockheed 12A, as well as a pair of Ryan STMs', and used it to commute from Sydney to his properties. Several of the the Herc drivers from Richmond were also checked out on the aircraft as I remember.
Tony's wife, Helen, had heard about these dangerous aircraft called Mustangs and refused to allow him to get one (he hadn't told her he had already bought it) so he didn't get to fly it for a while. I believe he got checked out while on a trip to the USA. He told Helen that he had a P51 endorsement and she was none the wiser. If you ever met them you will realise that it was a considerable act of bravery on the part of Tony to tell Helen what a P51 was.
The decision to sell the aircraft came after two engine failures where he was lucky to be able to dead-stick them into a paddock (Jerilderie does have some advantages). Helen delivered an ultimatum that it was either the Mustangs or her. The failures were later attributed to the Packard built Merlin engines where the oil galleries didn't quite match between two of the components thereby restricting the oil flow.
While I was there the Mustang did some ground runs but did not fly. Tony had removed something to ground the aircraft until payment had been completed. It was the first time I had heard a Merlin running, something you never forget.