Just a nice picture…..

It shows North American P-51D Mustang NL951HB which came out of a long term restoration at Glenn Wegman's Fighter Enterprises, Inc. in Florida last year. It made its first flight on 26 September 2020.

The proud owner, Hannu Halminen chose to have his Mustang finished in Canadian colours. The fighter wears the livery of RCAF9253 with code “BA-S” as was flown by "City of Hamilton" 424 Squadron.

On Sunday 22 August, Halminen will present his P-51 on the ramp of the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum in Hamilton (ONT, Canada)

Interesting to know is that the “real” RCAF9253 also still exists. This Mustang, former 44-74582, nowadays flies as N51JT, in USAF colours with buzz code FF-582 as “Crusader”.

The P-51 on the picture has an interesting history as it was delivered to the USAAF 8th AF as 44-72059 (c/n 122-31918) but soon passed on to the Swedish Air Force as Fv26142 in 1945.

Ten years later this airframe was sold to Nicaragua and flown there as GN-96. From Nicaragua, the Mustang was salvaged by the late Will Martin of MACO sales in 1963. He registered the machine in the USA as N6150U. According to Will Martin's daughter, Suzanne, he sold the fighter to Ralph Payne of Brownswood (TX). In 1966 Payne must have sold N6150U to a company called Aviacion Sanford, based in Gardena (CA). 

 Aviacion Sanford in its turn sold it, now to another South American air force, that of Bolivia. They operated the fighter as FAB-513 from 1966 to 1995.

After its operational career in Bolivia, it was then repatriated by World Jet Inc. of Fort Lauderdale (FL) and registered N711WJ. Not so long afterwards the plane was bought by Vintage Aero Inc. as N951HB. The restoration started in 2002, and was, as said, finished in 2020.

Photo: Derek Mickeloff