"Merlin Dorfman" wrote in message
...

The pictures are blurred, of course, but the fuselage insignia
seems to have the red line through the white rectangle, which would
be, IIRC, 1947 or later.


It doesn't look that way to me. I see what you're referring to, but the
stripe doesn't look very red. The red in the group marking on the
spinner/cowling shows up pretty well, why wouldn't it show up as well on the
national insignia?

The red stripe was added to the national aircraft insignia on January 14,
1947.

The USAAF adopted the "Buzz number" marking on November 6, 1945, for
fighters, trainers, and light bombers. The buzz number for a P-51 would be
PF- followed by the last three numbers of the aircraft serial. Note that
this aircraft has no buzz number.

I suspect the production crew just picked an image of a Mustang they liked
and went with it. They probably didn't think anyone would analyze it so
thoroughly.