Thank my girlfriend’s daughter and her early Mother’s Day gift of a DVD player that will play any and everything,including photos. I was just going through a CD looking for something else and I saw the first pic had BERT… then a few pics later there was the second one.

I notice in the photo of the planes after delivery both show serial numbers underneath the black square, do you have nay other shots of MC-Y that show whether it had the serial on the tail while in service with the 79th.? I’m curious to know if the serial was added prior to delivery or if it was always there, most of the 79th. P-51 pics I have don’t seem to show serials on the tails.

ACK! 😮 My mistake, you are right, it was MC-Y, flown by Walt Yarbrough, I have no clue where I pulled MC-L from… Do you have any photos of #44-72316?

No problem. The square is usually a sure give away but Capt. Art Heiden has told me about a few planes that were swapped between the squadrons of the 20th. Fighter Group which flew with different squadron codes and symbols on each side until they could be pulled off the line and the crews had the chance to finish painting them – sometimes days later.

So now we have 43-12185 coded MC-N, MC-W and MC-Q
and 43-25056 “Bond Baby?” as two confirmed two-seater conversions used by the 79FS?

I was also wondering if you had the serial number of the second 79th. P-51 that was sent to the Swiss AF, I know one was #44-72383 (MC-L),the former “Janey Girl II From Texas“, was the other #44-72316 (MC-S) “Bertie’s Bet II / Miss Martha“?

I have a copy of that photo, in fact it is what led me to ask if there were more than one two seaters built at King’s Cliffe so I now have three potential aircraft this could have been…I looked closely at my copy of the photo you posted and see that there appears to be the top of an M, not an L, so this a/c would have been MC-Q, yet another one it could have been.

I noticed that in the one I posted the metal work covers part of the national insignia. Just an observation.

BTW the man pictured in your photo is Ralph Englehart of D Flight Engineering, 79FS.

Martin, thank you very much, I figured if anyone would know it would be you. wasn’t that Dan Oxley’s (55th. FS) old plane? Do you have any idea if there were more than one converted to 2-seaters by the men of the 20th.?