This aircraft had many names - at first it was simply called NA-73, then Apache, Invader, but it went down in history as the Mustang, becoming the most massive fighter of the US Air Force and the same visiting card of American aviation as the legendary Flying Fortresses. Historians still argue that it is better - "Spitfire," "Mustang" or our Yak-3 and La-7. But these aircraft simply cannot be compared: they were created to perform different tasks, and when changing the role of dignity, they sometimes turn into disadvantages. (It's like comparing Zaporozhets with some Maserati, on which the oligarch's son forces, and the Italian's motor is an order of magnitude more powerful, and the design is incomparable, but what about driving along a country road with four bags of potatoes?) One thing is certain: among the American fighters of the time, the Mustang was the best, earning the honorary nickname "Air Cadillac." These machines fought on all fronts of World War II - from Europe to Burma, putting a victorious point in raids on Japan. Even when the era of jet aviation came, they remained in service for a long time, participating in local conflicts around the globe, and in the 1960s in the United States even debated the issue of resuming the production of Mustangs (of course, in a modernized form) to fight partisans.