At the end of January 1945, a P-51 Mustang, one of about 8,000 built by North American Aviation during World War II, rolled off the assembly line in Inglewood, California. At about the same time, a young fighter pilot, Harrison B. "Bud" Tordoff, finished his first tour of duty in England and went home to the States on leave, Tordoff had been a 19-year-old sophomore at Cornell University, studying ornithology, when he enlisted in the fall of 1942. "I had never been in a plane in my life," he recalls. "I was eager, thrilled with the poem 'High Flight,' and hoping to avoid fighting on the ground—completely naive." Having depth perception that "wasn't up to Air Force standards," he passed the vision test by observing the settings used on the testing apparatus by the candidate ahead of him. Nevertheless, during his first 69 missions he shot down three Bf 109 fighters, two of them on his very first encounter with the Luftwaffe. When he returned to duty on March 1, 1945, he found the brand-new P-51D waiting for him.
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机译：1945年1月下旬，一架P-51野马，即第二次世界大战期间北美航空制造的约8,000架野马中的一员，从加利福尼亚的英格伍德市下线。大约在同一时间，一位年轻的战斗机飞行员Harrison B.“ Bud” Tordoff在英格兰完成了他的第一次值班，并休假回到了美国，Tordoff在康奈尔大学（Cornell University）读了19岁的大二，他在1942年秋天入伍时正在研究鸟类学。他回忆说：“我一生中从未乘飞机上过飞机。” “我很想听到这首诗《 High Flight》，非常激动，并希望避免在地面上打架，这完全是天真的。”由于对“未达到空军标准”的深度了解，他观察了眼前候选人在测试设备上使用的设置，从而通过了视觉测试。尽管如此，在他的前69次任务中，他击落了3架Bf 109战斗机，其中2架是他与德国空军的第一次接触。当他于1945年3月1日重新执勤时，他发现了崭新的P-51D正在等待他。
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