Recently imported from the United States, 1944 P-51 Mustang ‘Moonbeam McSwine’ joins the Biggin Hill fleet for experience flights with flyaspitfire.com
On the 13th February 2025 via our flyaspitfire.com Facebook page, we announced the latest acquisition to our fleet, a 1944 P-51D Mustang ‘Moonbeam McSwine’ in two seat configuration, for flight experiences. Our Mustang was packed and ready to be shipped to our Hangars at Biggin Hill, for the re-assembly by our sister company, The Spitfire Company (Biggin Hill) Ltd. The shipment took three and a half weeks from the leaving the United States to arriving at our facility.
March 11th, our engineers were welcomed by the arrival of a container which of course contained our new Mustang. The Spitfire Company engineers stood in excitement as, the crane lifted the container from the lorry to ground level, a step closer to seeing the new Mustang. With the container in position and safely on the ground, Peter Monk (Managing Director of Fly a Spitfire) opened the doors to the container, revealing ‘Moonbeam McSwine’ packed inside very much like an Airfix kit. With the wings, fuselage and propeller on shipping jigs, and other items packed away in boxes. The first task was to remove all the small items and boxes of parts, to allow us plenty of room to remove the larger items. With the help of our Friends at Castle Air we removed the prop first, then the wing which on a Mustang is a complete one piece wing, then along came the fuselage which looked fantastic, as the fuselage emerged from the container and the name ‘Moonbeam McSwine’ appeared from the darkness.
In Order to Assemble the Mustang, we needed to flip the wing from its vertical position in the jig, to its horizontal position to enable us to mount the fuselage to the wing. Using a crane and plenty of engineers, the gear legs were pulled down and the wing was flipped to its Horizontal position, mounting the wing to a trestle to keep it in the correct position. With the wing correctly positioned, all eyes were on the fuselage, mounting a harness to the fuselage, the crane lifted the fuselage from its jig, while our team guided it towards the wing. With the fuselage above the wing, the crane slowly lowered the fuselage onto the wing while our engineers made sure that the fuselage was aligned to the mounting points on the wing. Slowly but surely, the fuselage was mated to the wing and our team began securing the fuselage in place, ‘Moonbeam McSwine’ started looking more like a Mustang. The tail was then lowered down, and she was on her wheels in the UK for the first time in many years, and she was rolled into our hangar where we could begin the full re-reassembly to flight.
Over a period of 3-4 months our team re-assembled ‘Moonbeam McSwine’ and began the process of preparing her for experience flights. Where she underwent a few changes to meet the CAA Approval for experience rides, she was also completely re-polished by aviation detailer Adam from our engineering team, which gave her a mirror finish exactly how she is supposed to be. Her first flight took place on 29th July, flown by Pete Kynsey, with a successful test flight.
The 2nd August 2025 saw Moonbeam’s first passenger experience rides at one of our selected locations, Cotswold Airport, where our P-51 Mustang joined Spitfire TE308 for a weekend of experience flights, and our first chase plane and Mustang experience too, which gave us the chance to capture some first air to air images. The 20th August, saw Linus the Painter a professional sign writer visits our Hangar at Biggin Hill to hand paint ‘Moonbeam McSwine’ on the side of our Mustang the very same way as it was done 80 years ago during the Second World War.
Since her arrival in the UK Moonbeam has attended several air shows including her first Uk show at Eastbourne and then Clacton airshow. But most notably our Mustang attended the Duxford Battle of Britain airshow on the weekend of the 6-7 September 2025, it was fantastic to see so many happy faces for Moonbeam’s return to the Duxford airshow after many years. In her previous ownership, owned by French Pilot Fred Akary, she was a regular visitor to the Duxford flying legends airshow, and a known warbird to the UK display scene, until her departure from Europe to the USA in 2018. Fred Akary at the Duxford Airshow said what a fantastic aircraft Moonbeam is. Before Fred sold Moonbeam in 2018, he’d flown 1,500 hours in her and carried out 80 displays!
After conducting Mustang flights with Moonbeam from Biggin Hill, and Cotswold Airport, we are delighted to announce that we are now offering Mustang flights from another location, Blackbushe (Thames Valley) Airport. Please check out our website if you are interested in flying in ‘Moonbeam McSwine’ from our selected Mustang locations, which include, Biggin Hill, Cotswold and Blackbushe Airport.
You can also see our Mustang on our Biggin Hill tours which run from Thursday to Saturday.
