The Waterbury Democrat., 1942-09-10
By ROBERT RUARK

being written by Robert Ruark.)
 By ROBERT RUARK
 Waterbury Democrat Washington
 Correspondent
 When the first North American Mustang combat plane crossed the channel from England and appeared over Europe, the Nazis didn't fire at 1t. The plane, SO the story goes, flew around over the German posi- tions urmolsted and daring some of the German planes to come up and give 1t battle. But nothing hap pened.
 Finally the pilot dived down and cut loose with a few bursts from his machine guns on an exposed German ground position. That brought action. NaN anti-aircraft | opened up and gave this lone pilot everything they had. But he got away all right, and returned to his English base, considerably shot up, but safe nevertheless.
 A short time later, when other Mustangs were being put through their trial flights over England, much to the test pilots surprise the British anti-aircraft batteries open ed up on the new and unfamiliar planes, sending them scurring for cover.
 It was from that experience that the R. A. F. figured out why their first Mustang flight over occupied France had been unable to stir up any air opposition.
 The trouble was simply that the Mustang, known in the United States as the P-51, looks so much like the German ME-l09 that 1t takes an expert to tell 'em apart when the planes are in the air, ob- served in silhouette or in such light conditions that identifying markings can't be distinguished easily. The Mustang in profile ap- pears to have the same ME-109 squared wing tips, the same tail surfave, it is powered by single milne engine, and is about the same size.
 It is from this similarity that a story has been spread in England and passed back to the United States that the Mustang was de- signed by two Germanrefugees who formerly were designers for Willy Meserschmitt, builder of the ME-109 and other Nazi planes. North Am erican Aviation Company officials flately deny this legend of German imitation in the design of their prize combat plane and they get kind | of excited about it whenever the i storp is repeated.
 PURELY COINCIDENTAL l
 While most people might be in. clined to feel that 1t was a smart trick to make use of German ref ugees to design better planes than the Germans themselves could build, the North American people don't feel that way. Any similarly between the P-51 and the ME-109, they in- sist, is purely coincidental.
 The fact that the two planes do happen to look alike at distance is not an accident, however, but i the result of scientific experiments apparently conducted independently in Germany and the United States, but yielding similar results. Design of the Mustang gees back to the spring of 1940. At that time the standard United States Army Air Force pursuit ship was the original P-4O.
 The British came to the United ! States and asked North American resigners to built ship that would better the performance of existing planes. North American designed and built plane which they called the ..A-73.
 When the British purchasing , commission in the United States determined that facilities were a. vailable to put the ship in pro- duction they qnickly accepted it. The British at that time did not require high altitude pursuit ship, but they did have other specified tions to which the NA-73 could be easily adapted.
 In working out the final design | to meet British specification, it developed naturally that with the particular laminar flow air-foil wing called for in the basic de- sign, it would give most efficient performance and meet British speci- fications best with the characteristic squared wing tips and tail surfaces which. make it resemble theME-109. So the design was approved that way
 U. S. ARMY LIKES THEM
 North American insists there were never any ex-Messerschmitt de- signers working on the Mustang designs. There are some ex-Germans working for North American, but all of them go back to the .pre-Messer- schmitt era of aviation.
 Some of them are men who came to the United States with Tony Fokker after the last warand stayed with the Fokker organization as it was successively merged into Gen. eral Aviation Company and finally North American. Also, Ed Schmued, chief of North Americans designers. is an ex-Austrian who served as a captain in the Austrian Air Force in last war. He's an American citi- zen now. and it is he, along with Project Engineer Ken Bowen, now assistant factory manager of North Americas Texas plant. who are largely responsible for the Mustangs design. Bowen, a former British citizen. once served in the R. A. P.
 When the first 10 Mustangs came of the assembly line two of them were given to United States Army Air Forces for tests, Their perfor- nance was so much better than the United States Army Air Forces had anticipated that a contract was given for a considerable number of the ships under the P-5l dsslgna.