Okay. The first photo, is a photo taken by NAA of a mock-up cockpit that was built during the design and development of the NA-73 Mustang I for the RAF. The mock-up was used in part to help refine the layout of the cockpit, where the various instruments would be, the various controls, the cockpit enclosure, how user friendly it would be and usable for the pilot. In a couple of photos of the mock-up cockpit, NAA included the top ring grip section to the control stick, the same top ring section fitted to the Harvard I aircraft already being supplied by NAA to the RAF. It was a case of showing the customer that they could supply a cockpit layout, look and feel to what the customer was used to - the 'spade' or 'ring' grip being in use with most RAF fighter type aircraft at that time. So just a cockpit section mockup, not an actual aircraft.
However, the decision was made to go into production with a standard US style 'pistol grip' top section to the control column.
However, part 2. A limited, underline, bold and capitalise
A LIMITED number of early NA-73 Mustang I aircraft were modified after arrival in the UK and issue to a RAF ACC Squadron, by the modification of the control column. This entailed removing the US NAA supplied pistol grip and replacing the top section with the ring grip normally fitted to a RAF Harvard I, The limited number of instances I have been able to confirm of this happening was usually for senior, long serving RAF officers in command of the Squadrons, whose RAF flying had been on UK manufactured aircraft types fitted with a ring grip as standard. Senior officers using their rank and priviledge for a small personalisation of what would be their 'regular mount. In practice, it didn't last long, as the turnover of early Mustang I aircraft as unmodified Mustang I that had been issued to Squadrons to allow them to work up on the type were replaced with modified Mustangs, and added to which the sharing of aircraft between pilots on a Squadron meant keeping them as standard as possible was required. Also by this stage, the number of pilots with or joining the ACC Mustang Squadrons who had flown other US manufactured aircraft either in training eg Stearman, Yale and Harvard or operationally eg P-40 Tomahawk was in the majority. Any of the limited number of Mustang I aircraft that had the personalised ring grip modification were converted back to the standard pistol grip.
The book extract in the original post is from a 'bootleg' foreign language version of the basic contents of the Squadron Signal book on the early Mustangs. A number of these and similar aviation titles turned up, from Russia from the late 1980s onwards - no respect for the original publishers copyright. I got see an original of one of these some years ago, and the paper and print quality was poor and the translation was certainly a bit 'off' of the narrative and photo captions. To some degree, it also captured a number of the errors of fact and Mustang 'myths' that were circulated about the early Mustangs at that time.
Below is a couple of pages taken from the RAF Pilot's Manual for the Mustang I, showing the standard cockpit layout and the standard pistol grip control column top.
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