Warbird Information Exchange

Reading re: Gerry Beck's Mustang being registered as N8086U, I recalled that I had seen photos of other Mustangs, back in the 1960s and 70s, with their civilian registration ending with the letter "U".

Was this a coincidence? Done on purpose, and if so, what was the meaning of the letter "U"?

Saludos,


Tulio

I think that some of the original Mustang registrations you're thinking of -- N6165U, N6166U, N6167U -- were all part of a block of numbers allocated to Will W. Martin/MACO Sales Financial Corp in 1963 when he brought a bunch of Mustangs back from Nicaragua.

Are there others that you're thinking of?

There have been numerous other groups of Mustangs, all with sequential N numbers, for the same reason. When they were purchased as surplus or re-imported to the US, the buyer/importer was allocated a block of N numbers to use.

A couple come to mind...including N50XXK (some McClellan AFB surplus sold to Mike Coutches in 1958) and N54XXV (Trans Florida Aviation built aircraft in the early 60s). The Mustangs recovered from El Salvador had block numbers...N31FF, 32FF, 33FF, etc, for "Flaherty Factors".