MUSTANG DESIGNER: Edgar Schmued and the P-51 [Paperback]

Ray Wagner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 17, 2000

Mustang Designer tells the story of American wartime fighter development, including engines and armaments, as part of a nationwide program of aircraft builders and fliers, focusing on Edgar Schmued, the designer of the Mustang. The P-51 Mustang is widely regarded as the best propeller-driven fighter that ever flew. What many might not realize is that the plane's developer was a German migrant. This book tells of how Schmued created a weapon that would ultimately prove lethal to the aspirations of those who had seized control over his native land.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“North American’s P-51 Mustang has consistently been regarded by many as the best propeller-driven fighter ever produced. What few people know, however, is that this exceptional plane, which protected Allied bombers and established dominance in the skies over Europe by defeating Germany’s legendary Messerschmitts and Focke-Wulfs, was designed by a self-taught German immigrant. Noted aviation historian Ray Wagner documents the professional life of Edgar Schmued, North American’s star design engineer and Mustang creator. . . Mustang fans will find little to fault in Wagner’s history. [The book] is a successful blend of engineering documentation and personal history, and aviation readers should thoroughly enjoy [it].”—Aviation Heritage

“The P-51 Mustang is a legend. Many knowledgeable observers consider it to be the premier long-range fighter of World War II, and those who have flown it call the Mustang one of the finest single-seat aircraft ever built. . . Drawing upon a wide variety of neglected sources, including original procurement and flight-test records, and especially Schmued's personal papers, Wagner has crafted a well-written and beautifully illustrated account that chronicles the Mustang's design history in rich and exacting detail.”—Air Power History

“This fascinating, well illustrated book . . . brings alive the struggles and triumphs of all [the] competing aircraft factories and their products in the World War II days. . . . The style is straightforward, livened up with reminiscences from many interviews and Schmued's own notes. . . . Ray Wagner has done a remarkable job.”—WASP News

“Mustang Designer is a milestone in aviation historical writing because the author [looks] at aircraft design in the context of its history. . . . A must for serious readers.”—Skyways

About the Author

Aviation historian Ray Wagner is the author of American Combat Planes (1960) and North American Sabre (1963), which was the first book-length history of an Air Force fighter. A retired history teacher, he is an archivist for the San Diego Aerospace Museum.

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Smithsonian Institution Press; reprin edition (April 17, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1560989947
• ISBN-13: 978-1560989943
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 0.6 x 11 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #882,249 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great reading for aviation enthusiasts and military buffs., June 4, 2000

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: MUSTANG DESIGNER: Edgar Schmued and the P-51 (Paperback)

Mustang Designer: Edgar Schmued And The P-51 is the complete story behind the development and deployment of one of the most famous fighter aircraft of World War II. Beginning with the choosing of fighter designs in the formative years of 1935 to 1939 covering P-30 to P-50 craft, author Ray Wagner presents the birth of the Mustang in 1940 as designed by Ed Schmued and North American Aviation. The various incarnations and variations of the Mustang are followed up to and including the early jet age years of 1945 to 1952 and the Northrop Aviation launch of a new fighter. A highly recommended design and development history, Mustang Designer is enhanced for the aviation enthusiast and military buff with an appendix, notes, glossary, bibliography and index.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Terrific book, gives great insights into the P-51, F-82, F-100, F-5, North American, and Edgar Schmued, September 9, 2007

By 

DarthRad (United States) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: MUSTANG DESIGNER: Edgar Schmued and the P-51 (Paperback)

This is an excellent book, and serves as both a biography about Edgar Schmued and a history of the engineering work behind the P-51 and several other aircraft. Schmued led the design team that created the P-51. It does not cover all of the details behind the development of the P-51, leaving out the politics of how the USAAF finally adopted this half British aircraft. The best part of this book is that it is possible to see how closely the North American engineers worked with the test pilots and field reports; it was this tightly coupled engineering culture which responded quickly to every input, every flaw, that enabled the P-51 Mustang to reach perfection first and beat out its rivals.

Another book "P-51 Mustang: Development of the Long Range Escort Fighter" covers the bigger picture of the USAAF's overall search for a better fighter plane. This book very much complements "Mustang Designer" and should be read to get the full flavor of what happened with the P-51's development. For example, "P-51 Mustang" talks about the role of Colonel Thomas Hitchcock in championing the P-51 with the Roosevelt administration at a time when some in the USAAF brass were trying to kill it (an upper crust polo player, he had direct connections to the Roosevelt administration), but fails to mention Hitchcock's ultimate fate. "Mustang Designer" mentions almost in passing that Hitchcock was killed while test flying a P-51D on April 18, 1944, but does not go into the details of how crucial he was to the adoption of the P-51 by the USAAF.

One reviewer complained about the lack of information about Schmued's use of conical sections in designing the curves of the airplane. There is a half-page description of Schmued's use of conical sections on the P-51 - page 57, which does explain the principles, if not the details of what Schmued did.

"Mustang Designer" does clear up some urban legends about the P-51. It was the British who started the myth that the P-51 was designed by a German who had worked for Messerschmitt.

Schmued was indeed a German-Austrian, with an Austrian citizenship until he immigrated to the U.S. by way of Brazil. He was sponsored to come to the United States through his excellent work for General Motors in Brazil (immigration rules were extremely strict at that time - he was one of 794 people with Austrian citizenships admitted in the 1929 quota) and went straight to work for Fokker Aircraft Corporation of America, which was an aircraft company that was owned by General Motors and based in New Jersey. He joined North American Aviation when it was reorganized as an aircraft manufacturer. Schmued never worked for Messerschmitt; he did work for Fokker, but, despite its name, this was a wholly American owned company that happened to have Dutchman Anthony Fokker as its head.

The book goes on with details about the later problems with the F-82 (the USAF forced North American to use a two-stage supercharger Allison V-1710, which was an engineering flop, instead of the Packard-Merlin engine). Schmued also had a hand in the designs of the F-86 and F-100, but the exact details of what he did are not spelled out in this book. Schmued left North American in 1952, after Dutch Kindelberger became ill and started to devolve power to Lee Atwood, with whom Schmued disagreed intensely (the intensity of this disagreement is seen by the fact that Schmued was just three years shy of being fully invested in a pension from North American when he left - as a result, he received no pension from North American).

This book does not talk about the post-Schmued, post-Kindelberger years at North American, but they were mostly filled with a series of aircraft designs that never made it into production. The F-100 would be the last fighter plane that North American would produce. Schmued would leave North American before the F-100 flew (he lost a final dispute over changes to the design of the F-100), and it is clear from the subsequent prolonged teething problems of the F-100 that North American sorely missed Schmued's troubleshooting genius.

With Kindelberger and Schmued gone, the excellent engineering culture of North American seemed to wither under the mediocre stewardship of Lee Atwood. North American went into the space business, but this would culminate in the disastrous fire that killed the Apollo 1 astronauts in 1967. The negative backlash from that disaster (North American had built the command module that caught fire) ultimately forced North American to merge with Rockwell, which then buried this once famous name completely. (This later period of North American's history is not covered in this book).

Schmued, on the other hand, would go on to work for Northrop, and would help revive the flagging engineering designs of that company by designing the F-5. Ironically, the person who would hire him was Oliver Echols, the general in the USAAF who had played a semi-antagonistic role against the P-51 during its early days (Echols's role against the P-51 is described in the book "P-51 Mustang").

Also not mentioned in this book is the fact that Schmued's F-5 design would evolve into Northrop's YF-17, which then became the F-18, the Navy's current all-purpose and ONLY fighter plane (now that the F-14s have all been chopped up to keep Iran from obtaining parts for their remaining F-14s).

Overall this is an extremely valuable book for understanding the history of the P-51, F-82, F-100, North American Aviation, the F-5, and the man behind all of those success stories, Edgar Schmued.

Amazon has four listings for various other printings of this book:

0517088207 Random House 1992 (hardcover)

0517567938 Crown 1st edition 1990 (hardcover)

B000KRITOC Orion Books 1990 (hardcover)

B000QRPVEC Orion books 1991 (hardcover)

All of these are out of print, and so this paperback reprint by Smithsonian Institute Press is the most readily available.

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars While this is a great book, I was hoping for info on ..., April 3, 2002

By 

Don Snyder (San Diego, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: MUSTANG DESIGNER: Edgar Schmued and the P-51 (Paperback)

the history of conic sections at North American Aviation (NAA). NAA was using conics in '32, Schmued was (at the least) an enthusiastic supporter of conics, and his P-51 Mustang was the first aircraft to be completely defined by conics.

Roy A. Liming worked with Schmued to mathematically analyze the Mustang's shapes, tangents and curvatures. Schmued wrote an introduction to Liming and Hartley's series of articles for Aero Digest explaining the use of conics. These articles (along with the success of the Mustang) showed that NAA was ahead of it's time during WWII.