1:72 Corgi North American P-51D Mustang (Early)

It would be fair to say that the first half of the 1940 years was a rather eventful time for Texas native Jack Milton Ilfrey. Having successfully completed his pilot training in the US, he was initially posted to fly home defence missions in the Lockheed P-38 lightning with the 94th Pursuit Squadron out of San Diego, but would be reassigned to the European theatre in the spring of 1942. Flying his fighter to Britain via the perilous North Atlantic Ferry route, The squadron were due to meet up with their ground crews and commence training and operational work up at the RAF Kirton-in-Lindsey, in Lincolnshire. Later that same year, Ilfrey and the rest of the 1st Fighter Group was sent to North Africa, in support of the allied invasion codenamed ‘Operation Torch’, during the ferry flight, his lightning lost a drop tank and would not have enough fuel to complete the journey. Landing at an airfield in neutral Portugal, Ilfrey was told that his aircraft would be impounded and he faced interment for the rest of the war. He was then introduced to a Portuguese pilots who allowed the lightning to be refuelled, in exchange for a tour of the aircraft, kneeling on its wings so he could get a better view of the cockpit. Just then, another P-38 low on fuel passed overhead and in the confusion, Ilfrey seized his chance – starting the engines and opening the throttles, the Portuguese pilot was blown off the wing and Ilfrey took to the air with some haste. Manually navigating across Portugal and Spain to arrive at Gibraltar, where he was later reprimanded for potentially causing an international incident and only avoided punishment due to the personal intervention of a Major General Jimmy Doolittle, Commander of the Fifteenth Air Force.