One of the most well known fighter planes used during the war was the North American P-51 Mustang. The P-51 was originally made by the U.S. for the RAF – Great Britain’s Royal Air Force – because Great Britain was in dire need of new fighters to fend off the German’s Luftwaffe. The Mustang was an exceptional plane that could reach a maximum speed of about 437mph, which was produced by a single Packard Merlin engine. Mustangs could fly over 2,000 miles just on one fuel tank of gas, which is the main reason Mustangs were great escorts for B-17’s during bomb raids all over Europe and Japan. In fact, one of the P-51’s most famous escort jobs was taking our planes into Normandy during D-Day. They also took part in escorting planes over Japan in the last couple of days and might even have escorted the Enola Gay to drop the atom bomb over Hiroshima.