The XP-82 Twin Mustang, the Two-Fuselage Fighter That Refused to Fly Until They Turned the Propellers Around, and Tom Reilly's Ten-Year Resurrection of the Last One in the World

The North American XP-82 Twin Mustang is a World War II-era long-range fighter built from two stretched P-51 Mustang fuselages joined by a new center wing and shared tail. After a decade-long restoration led by veteran warbird restorer Tom Reilly in Douglas, Georgia, prototype XP-82 number 887 became the only airworthy Twin Mustang in the world, flying again on New Year’s Eve after more than 60 years grounded.

What Is the XP-82 Twin Mustang?

The Twin Mustang looks exactly like what it is: two Mustangs married at the hip. Two fuselages, two propellers, two crew positions, and a single wing tying everything together in the middle.

North American Aviation’s design team, led by Edgar Schmued, drew it up in 1944 to solve a brutal Pacific-theater problem: distance. B-29 Superfortress bombers were flying missions so long that no single-seat fighter could escort them the whole way and return. Strapping one pilot into a P-51 for eight, ten, or twelve hours over open ocean wasn’t a mission - it was a slow way to exhaust good pilots.

The solution was two engines, two fuel systems, and two pilots who could trade off flying, letting one rest while the other flew. Critically, the Twin Mustang was not simply two P-51s bolted together. The fuselages were stretched and the airframe was re-engineered where needed, but the Mustang DNA remained unmistakable.

Why Wouldn’t the First Twin Mustang Fly?

When North American rolled out the first XP-82 in 1945, it refused to take off. The test pilot firewalled both throttles, accelerated down the runway - and the airplane would not leave the ground. Repeated attempts produced the same result.

The problem was the propellers. Both engines turned their props in the same direction, standard practice at the time. But on the Twin Mustang, the propellers sit inboard, throwing their slipstream directly across the center wing section - the piece doing a large share of the lifting. With the blades coming down through the middle, they killed the airflow over that center section. The wing between the fuselages simply wasn’t making lift.

The fix was to reverse the propeller rotation so the blades came up through the center, moving the descending blades out to the wingtips where they did less harm. With the props turning the correct way, the airplane flew like it had something to prove. The difference between failure and one of the great long-range piston fighters came down to which direction the propellers spun.

What Records Did the Twin Mustang Set?

In 1947, an F-82 production model named Betty Jo flew nonstop from Hickam Field, Hawaii to New York City - more than 5,000 miles in a little over 14 hours, with no refueling and no stops. It remains the longest nonstop flight ever made by a propeller-driven fighter, a record that will never be broken because piston fighters are no longer built. Betty Jo is on display today at the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton, Ohio.

The Twin Mustang went to war one final time in Korea in 1950. When North Korean forces crossed the border, F-82s flew top cover, and an F-82 crew scored the first confirmed aerial victory of the Korean War.

The Twin Mustang was the last piston-engine fighter the U.S. Air Force ever bought new. Of roughly 200 built, nearly all were scrapped as the jet age arrived. A handful survived as static museum pieces, and for decades the number of flyable Twin Mustangs in the world was zero.

How Did Tom Reilly Restore the Last Twin Mustang?

Tom Reilly, a restorer’s restorer, acquired the bones of XP-82 number 887, one of the original prototypes - and “bones” is the right word. This was a project measured in years and tens of thousands of hours, because a Twin Mustang is, in many ways, two airplanes: two fuselages, two engines, two of nearly everything, plus a one-of-a-kind center section and tail that no one has manufactured since the 1940s.

The parts weren’t sitting in a crate. Reilly and his crew had to hunt them across the country and beyond, chasing serial numbers, rumors, and decades-old photographs. The right-hand fuselage the project needed turned up in the Alaskan bush - recovering it was less a phone call than an expedition. When a part no longer existed anywhere on Earth, they pulled the original drawings and fabricated it by hand to original specification, so the finished airplane would be authentic rather than a modern replica.

For close to ten years, a small crew in a hangar in Douglas, Georgia rebuilt two Merlin engines and sorted out systems no one had troubleshot since the 1950s. There were no factory reps to call and no owner’s group forums - the knowledge lived in old manuals and in the hands of people who refused to let it die.

Why the Propeller Lesson Still Matters

The 1945 propeller failure wasn’t trivia to the restoration team - it was a hard fact they had to get exactly right. Hang the engines and props without honoring what North American’s engineers learned the hard way, and the rebuilt airplane would do exactly what the first one did: sit on the runway and refuse to fly.

Every quirk the Twin Mustang had in 1945 it still has today, because it is the same airplane obeying the same laws of the air. Restoring it meant respecting the engineering lessons baked into the design, not just making it strong and pretty.

The Return to Flight

On New Year’s Eve, at Douglas Municipal Airport in Georgia, a decade of work sat fueled on the ramp with two freshly rebuilt Merlins. When the engines came alive, they produced a sound the world had not heard from a flying Twin Mustang in over half a century - the deep rumble of two Merlins, doubled.

She rolled out, lifted off with the props turning the right way, and the only flyable Twin Mustang on Earth was back in the sky. The airplane has since appeared at Oshkosh, where thousands have stood in front of it - most never realizing its propellers carry a lesson written in 1945.

Key Takeaways

• The XP-82 Twin Mustang is a WWII long-range fighter made of two stretched P-51 fuselages joined by a center wing, designed by Edgar Schmued’s team at North American Aviation starting in 1944.
• The first prototype wouldn’t fly in 1945 until engineers reversed the propeller rotation so the blades swept upward through the center wing, restoring lift.
• An F-82 named Betty Jo flew 5,000+ miles nonstop from Hawaii to New York in about 14 hours in 1947 - still the longest nonstop flight by a piston fighter, now displayed at the National Museum of the USAF.
• Restorer Tom Reilly spent roughly ten years rebuilding prototype XP-82 #887, even recovering its right-hand fuselage from Alaska and fabricating missing parts by hand.
• The restored aircraft is the only airworthy Twin Mustang in the world, returned to flight on New Year’s Eve at Douglas, Georgia, and has since flown to Oshkosh.