A Mustang at 22 Degrees: Hanging an Iconic Fighter

A prominent artifact in the upcoming Jay I. Kislak World War II in the Air gallery will be the Museum’s P-51D Mustang (Air Force serial number 44-74939), painted as Lt. Col. Frederick H. Lefebre’s Willit Run?, assigned to the 351st Fighter Squadron, 353rd Fighter Group, 8th Air Force, U.S. Army Air Forces.

The aircraft was on display in the Museum’s World War II Aviation gallery when our building on the National Mall opened in 1976. The original gallery displayed the artifact sitting on its landing gear until its removal in 2019 as part of the building’s ongoing renovation. The new gallery design calls for the Mustang to be suspended dynamically from the ceiling as if it were in flight. Rather than have it hang in a straight and level flight attitude, the gallery team wanted the fighter rolled 22 degrees to the left. It was our job in the Preservation and Restoration Unit (PRU) to bring that design idea into reality as part of our overall responsibility to prepare the aircraft and other large artifacts for the Museum’s upcoming new galleries. To meet these new display requirements, there are many things that we did to ensure the safety of not only the artifact itself, but the staff and visitors who will be around and under this object every day.

The first challenge is determining where we can attach the rigging to the aircraft structure to support the load while suspended. The rigging plan we devised calls for lifting from both the nose and the tail of the aircraft. At the tail, we chose the Mustang’s built-in lifting point, as mentioned in AN 01-60JE-2 Erection and Maintenance Instructions for Army Model P-51D Series Airplanes, using a custom-made lifting bar. At the nose, we built another custom rigging fixture that attached to the engine mount and firewall, two of the strongest areas on the aircraft. To accommodate the new fixture, we needed to remove the oil tank, remake the right leading edge wing fairing, and remake the oil tank access door. All parts removed will be placed into long-term storage so we can re-install them in the future.

Once the new fixtures were built by PRU’s in-house fabricators, museum specialists Kenny Mills and Meghann Girard (learn more about their awesome work here), it was time to assemble and do a test lift of the aircraft to ensure that everything worked as expected.

Due to the size of the aircraft and height of the test lift, it took some problem solving to come up with a way to get the aircraft into its display configuration and then back onto its landing gear.

The next step in our plan of action was to figure out which equipment from the Mary Baker Engen Restoration Hangar we needed to accomplish the lift. The angle of roll required for the final display added an extra level of complexity. The aircraft had to be raised fairly high so that when we introduced the roll, the lower wing would not hit the ground. With a lot of measuring and a very rudimentary CAD drawing, we determined that we needed to lift the fuselage about 12 feet off the ground.

Once we had this figured out, and knowing the total weight of the aircraft (about 7,500 pounds), we measured all of our shop equipment and determined that we only had two pieces that would meet our criteria for height and capacity—our 30-ton Terex crane, and a 21-foot-tall A-frame with a 10-ton chain hoist.

When we assembled the aircraft with this equipment, we discovered an additional fun challenge! While putting the fuselage on the wing, we realized that because our chosen lifting points were offset slightly from the aircraft’s center of gravity, there will be a natural tendency to roll when lifting the aircraft. While this is an ideal scenario to have for the final display, we first need to be level so that we can safely retract the landing gear and close the inner landing gear doors.

To solve this problem, we hung our spreader bar (attaching to the front two lift points) off center. This adjusts the leverage of the spreader bar and redistributes the force of the crane during the lift. By making this adjustment, we were able to even out the force needed to lift each side of the plane and  lift it with the wings level.

With this problem solved, our plan was as follows:

• Raise the tail so that the aircraft is level.
• Lift the entire aircraft just off the ground.
• Raise the landing gear.
• Close the inner landing gear doors.
• Lift the entire aircraft to our required clearance height.
• Introduce the 22-degree roll.
• Ensure that there are no surprises with the rigging plan or fixtures.
• Roll the aircraft back to level.
• Lower the aircraft to just above the height of the landing gear.
• Lower the landing gear.
• Set the aircraft down on its main wheels.
• Lower tail to its resting three point attitude.

Last month, we gathered our team of seven people and put our plan into action. I’m happy to say that our awesome team was able to execute this plan to perfection and we had no surprises during our test lift.

Now the Mustang is ready to be installed downtown for visitors to enjoy in the Jay I. Kislak World War II in the Air gallery when it opens to the public in 2026.

If you’d like to learn more about the details behind rigging aircraft in the Museum’s galleries, check out this episode from our AirSpace podcast!

Richard Snell and Heather Moosher are museum specialists in the Preservation and Restoration Unit, Collections Department, at the Museum. The authors would like to thank all our Museum colleagues who have collaborated with us during the treatment of Willit Run? and helped us write this blog.