What are these red balloon-like markings?

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lackstone

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Jan 19, 2021

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The airplane is an RF-51 of the 45th TRS at K14 (Kimpo), S Korea, sometime in 1952. Not sure of the date but I do have the flight logs of the pilot (my pop) so I could dig that up. The airplane was (probably) resurrected from the pending scrap yard in Japan and modded for Recce duties, meaning it was probably on active status in WW2 in the Pacific as a straight D-model. All the planes with the 45th were obtained from that source and they all carried their WW2 personal markings. Those red hot air balloon-looking markings are unfamiliar to me. Any guesses?
 
Interesting photo. You can see a partial "5"1D-10NT with 2534A under it on the fuselage. The NT stands for North American Texas or Dallas built airframes. Dallas didn't build P-51D-10NT airframes but they did build P-51K-10NT airframes, S/N 44-11953 / 44-12552.

I believe your aircraft is actually P-51K-10NT 44-12534 re-identified as RF-51D 44-12534A, "RF-534". https://www.crouze.com/baugher/usaf_serials/1944_01.html

44-11953/12552 North American P-51K-10-NT Mustang
44-12523/44-12534 built as F-6K-10-NT
44-12534 (67th TRW, 45th TRS) crash landed in enemy territory due to engine trouble Dec 27, 1952.

When balloons were first used during the Civil War and WWI they were used for Observation. My guess is they are being used to indicate a Photo-Recon (Observation) mission during Korea.

Here are several color photos from NARA of the F-51D's in Korea.
https://catalog.archives.gov/search?q=f-51d&recordGroupNumber=342



 
44-12534 (67th TRW, 45th TRS) crash landed in enemy territory due to engine trouble Dec 27, 1952 ?

44-12534 ?

Joe Baugher had this as one of many B-25C Mitchell's that were sent to the USSR, So not a P-51 Mustang ?
 
Alex Smart said:
44-12534 (67th TRW, 45th TRS) crash landed in enemy territory due to engine trouble Dec 27, 1952 ?

44-12534 ?

Joe Baugher had this as one of many B-25C Mitchell's that were sent to the USSR, So not a P-51 Mustang ?
Click to expand...
B-25C's ordered in 1944? Huh?

B-25 History Project

B-25C-NA Mitchell bomber technical specifications and history
b-25history.org
 
Alex Smart said:
Joe Baugher had this as one of many B-25C Mitchell's that were sent to the USSR, So not a P-51 Mustang ?
Click to expand...
There must be a typo somewhere ("lost in translation").
Here's Joe Baugher's list with 44- serials and 44-12534 was a F-6K-10-Nt with the 67th TRW, 45th TRS crash landed in enemy territory due to engine trouble Dec 27, 1952.
The B-25C you are talking about has a serial 41-12534: North American B-25C Mitchell (MSN 82-5169) to USSR
 
Hey, it's nice somebody archived some of Joe Baugher's stuff!

I was actually thinking of just making text files and copying everything there when I found he died out of a fear it'd eventually disappear from the interwebz. Unfortunately it was a LOT of information and I ended up procrastinating.
 
Zipper730 said:
Hey, it's nice somebody archived some of Joe Baugher's stuff!
Click to expand...
There was a thread in our forum recently, where a fine gentleman shared with us the new link - sorry I don't remember who he was.
I've been using the Waybackmachine before - the original Joe's stuff is there. It's kind of slow though. The new site is much better.
 
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