There are a few facts about the P-51 which I will mention here. There was a lever that controlled openings that kept the coolant from boiling over while waiting to take off and it closed as soon as you were in the air. The wheels were pulled up as soon as you left the ground so you had to remember to put them down again before landing. The four bladed propeller was a variable pitch and had to be set so it would bite more air, getting you into the air faster, climbing steep, then set back to the right angle. A small tube at the and of the wing ran the wind indicator so you know how fast you're going. The plane had a cockpit heater that didn't always work too well and that was a primary complaint of the pilots. At 30,000 feet the temperature could be anywhere from zero to minus 60 degrees so you needed all the heat you could get. The guns were fired by pressing a button on the top of the stick and we would test them on the way across the Channel to be sure they were working. There was a camera mounted on the wing which worked from the same button and it took pictures every time the gun fired. This verified the enemy planes the pilots claimed to have destroyed. One pilot in our squadron had the cutest little puppy. It was a little brown fat thing with fur soft as cotton. It would sleep on' the back of his neck and he took it everywhere but on the missions. Another incident I remember took place when I was walking in London. There were so many Americans around, I started looking for someone I might have known in the States. I finally saw someone who looked familiar standing across the street, so I dashed over and asked his name. You can imagine my embarrassment when he said: "Yes, sir, I am the armorer on your plane." On the days that we were to fly escort for the bombers we would get up about 6:00 am as we heard the bombers taking off. We went to breakfast and then the Ready Room for briefing. When the curtain was pulled back and the ribbon went all the way to Berlin you knew you would have a tough mission. The weather man would give us the weather over the target and what to expect when we returned to England. All of our compass headings depended on the weather, our point of rendezvous with the bombers, heading to the target, and the compass heading home. The map man would describe the coast of Europe at the entry point and additional points of identification along the way so we would be certain of our location. He explained where we would be likely to encounter flak (the big German guns) and where we could anticipate the most enemy fighters. We wrote down all of this information on a pad fastened just above our knee so we could refer to it in a hurry.