Paul Mantz in his P-51C, Blaze of Noon, in which he set coast-to-coast speed records in each direction and won that year's Bendix Trophy.
Stunt pilot and air racer Paul Mantz flew in more than 250 movies and once owned the world's seventh largest air force
P-51C-10NT in which Paul Mantz won the 1946 Bendix Trophy Race, covering 2,048 miles at an average of 435 mph. In 1947, with the plane renamed Blaze of Noon, he won it again at 460 mph. In June 1928 Aviation Cadet Albert Paul Mantz had the world by its tail feathers. The 24-year-old, high on the honors list at the U.S. Army flight school at March Field, Calif., had more than 125 hours in the air, needing just one more hour of solo time to graduate the next day. He took off in a Consolidated PT-1 Trusty biplane trainer and followed the Southern Pacific rail line east toward Whitewater. Spotting a train laboring up 2,600-foot San Gorgonio Pass, he decided to have some fun with it, and rolled the Trusty over and down to pull out just above the tracks, headed right for the locomotive. As the engineer blared his whistle, Mantz pulled up just enough to miss its stack and buzzed the length of train, for good measure doing a low roll past Whitewater Station, giving a wing-wave to passengers as they hit the dirt. When he landed back at March, he was arrested on the spot. The train had been full of Army Air Corps brass, coming to attend the graduation ceremony. Mantz was dragged before a disciplinary board and dismissed, his Army flight career over. And they hadn't even found out he'd faked two years of college at Stanford University just to get in.
P-51C-10NT as flown by ex-U.S. Navy Captain Charles F. Blair Jr. On January 31, 1951, Blair flew Excalibur III from New York to London, 3,478 statute miles in 7 hours and 48 minutes, averaging 450 mph to break the previous speed record by 1 hour 7 minutes. On May 30th he flew it solo over the North Pole, 3,260 miles in 10 hours and 27 minutes, and ten hours later he flew nonstop from Alaska to New York in 9 hours, 31 minutes. President Harry S. Truman awarded Blair the 1951 Harmon Trophy as the world's outstanding aviator.
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