This build is a bit of an accident, really. I assumed (or rather, hoped) that a “twin mustang” would be easy, just pasting together two of my ‘stangs. Unfortunately, the P/F-82 has a different fuselage, exhaust, tail section, wings… you get it; in the end I could keep only some bits and pieces of the original P51, the rest is new. Serves me right for believing there’s such a thing as a “shortcut”.

The plane was really intended as an entry for Diloph’s “Korean War Challenge”, but I ended up with a part count that was way too high –after all, it’s really two planes. And so I’ll just upload it “as is”. There aren’t too many of these P/F-82 night fighters on SP, so there’s room for one more.

The North American F-82 Twin Mustang is the last American piston-engine fighter ordered into production by the United States Air Force. Based on the P-51 Mustang, the F-82 was originally designed as a long-range escort fighter in World War II. The war ended well before the first production units were operational. In the postwar era, Strategic Air Command used the planes as a long-range escort fighter. Radar-equipped F-82s were used extensively by the Air Defense Command as replacements for the Northrop P-61 Black Widow as all-weather day/night interceptors. During the Korean War, Japan-based F-82s were among the first USAF aircraft to operate over Korea. The first three North Korean aircraft destroyed by U.S. forces were shot down by F-82s, the first being a North-Korean Yak-11 downed over Gimpo Airfield by the USAF 68th Fighter Squadron.

Controls;

• AG1 Flaps
• AG2 Lights
• AG3 Drop tanks
• AG4 Drop outboard hardpoints
• AG5 Toggle tail wheel steering
• AG6 Toggle engine exhaust smoke

Since this is a “night fighter” version of the P/F-82, the SCR-720 radar pod can’t be dropped. It’s damn ugly, but it’s a fixed part of the plane nonetheless. The plane has two 310-gallon drop tanks, which don’t really help its abilities as a fighter; feel free to lose those by hitting AG3. The remaining hardpoints (AG4) were left empty; these can be used for another pair of drop tanks, bombs, or 5-inch rockets.

I didn’t turn on the exhaust smoke effect as standard; you can activate it with AG6 -those who don’t like it can leave it off. One caveat; if you want to turn it off again, you have to throttle down to zero before hitting AG6. For some reason, SP doesn’t allow for the effect to be deactivated otherwise since it responds to the throttle, and I didn’t feel like investigating why & how to bypass that.

Enjoy!