Exploring the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum’s Udvar-Hazy Center, I saw this blood red P-51C hanging from the ceiling, and I immediately knew that this plane had to be Paul Mantz’s Bendix air racer that finished first in 1946, and again in 1947.
Getting close enough to read the name under the cockpit, I wondered who Capt. Charles F. Blair might have been? And what was the link to Pan American World Airways? The white letters on the long cowling said this was the Excalibur III and not Mantz’s revolutionary racer.
Little did I know of this plane’s record-setting flights and its contribution to the Cold War fears of bombers and missiles loaded with Soviet nukes making their way to America via the North Pole.
[Read more…] about Same Plane, New Name & Accomplishments