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The North American P-51 Mustang
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Watsonville 2005
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P-51 Mustang at Watsonville 2005
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story and photography by Curtis Fowles

From BT-13s to the B-17 Flying Fortress, this little fly-in had a nice showing of warbirds. There was a unique formation with a P-51, a P-40 and a BF-109. Very nice. The Sea Fury and Bearcat joined for a group of their own and we had a few stray P-51s doing some nice photo passes.

The P-51s in attendance were Dan Martin in "Ridge Runner III", Terry Tarditti in "Comfortably Numb" and Harold Kindsvater in "Straw Boss 2". Skip Holm flew Harold's 109 and Elsworth Getchell was in his Hawker Sea Fury, plus a P-40 and F-8F Bearcat from Tony Banta and a Yak-9. There was also good group of T-6s and some BT-13s.

The Commemorative Air Force (CAF) was present with their B-17 "Sentimental Journey". They took a load of paying passengers up at the end of the show for a nice flight around the Monterey Bay area mostly to the north of Watsonville. The Marines took off in their C-130 at the end of Sunday and did a nice photo pass. Take a look at the cockpit close-up and you can see many heads looking back at you.