During World War II, this plane, the P-51 Mustang, was
developed as a long range fighter escort to US and
allied bombing squadrons.
The Mustang and the brave pilots who flew them quickly
turned the tide in the air campaign against Germany.
One such pilot is retired Brigadier
General Roland R. Wright.
It's just a special airplane.
It was the supreme airplane in World War II.
After serving as a full-time missionary for the Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, this 21-year-old from
Blackfoot, Idaho, heard another call.
This time the call came from his country.
Roland joined the Army Air Corps in 1942, shortly after
the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
My hope and dream was to be able to fly the B-51.
It was called the Mustang.
Everybody had a name for their airplane.
Quite often they had something to do with women.
My desire even from the very beginning, if I got in the
P-51 would be to name it the Mormon Mustang.
Because I was proud of my heritage.
And I was very proud to have people know who I was.
Roland Wright painted the Mormon Mustang on actually
three different planes before he was done.
This is painted like his second airplane that he had.
We put Roland's name on the plane because he flew the
Mormon Mustang.
He shot down three planes during the war.
The first one was a 262 jet, which you had to be very, very
good to manage the intercept with a Mustang.
Because they were at least 100 miles an hour faster.
This is our TBM Avenger.
The museum is here to honor our veterans.
This particular plane is here to honor Roland Wright, a good
Mormon boy who went to war, who lived his standards.
He retired as a general.
And we need to honor men like that.
Because were it not for men like that, we would not have
the freedoms we have today.
You up for this?
I'm up for it.
He's just a great guy, 91 years old and
still loves to fly.
There's not many things in life that
are better than this.
You're 90 years old.
You get to go up in P-51.
And it couldn't get any better than that.
I find a lot of parallels between flying, what I find in
the scriptures and life's experiences.
You go to the unit.
They're busily flying combat.
They assume you've been trained.
I remember the first day I went out to fly.
They asked the flight leader if we were going
to fly in the clouds.
He looked at me.
And he says well, you can fly formation, can't you?
I said, yes.
I can fly formation.
When you're flying formation, the precision of formation,
the trust of flying formation--
that brings things to a whole new level.
It's easy for you to just get on the wing.
We'll climb up through those clouds.
And on top, the sun will be shining.
You can do all kinds of things.
Now when [UNINTELLIGIBLE PHRASE], the
clouds are about 18,000 feet thick.
We are very dependent on each other.
Because we fly close.
You mess up and you can take a lot of people with you.
I got on his wing.
And I got vertigo so bad climbing up
through those clouds.
I thought he was climbing.
I thought he was diving.
And I'm trying to hang on to that wing.
Where you finally break out on top, of course
everything's fine.
But it's one of the best experiences I ever had.
Because it taught me what vertigo was.
And it motivated me to learn to fly in the clouds and rely
on the flight instruments.
We doing OK, General?
Hey.
This is great.
I can't believe the size of the Tetons.
The Tetons are magnificently beautiful
and inherently dangerous.
If an engine quits when you're right over the Tetons, you
better do everything just right or you're
going to be a statistic.
We have to plan it out correctly so that
we don't get hurt.
You have rules and regulations that you follow.
And that preserves your life.
In the scriptures, they're called commandments.
You'll survive out here.
And you'll learn to accomplish something if you just rely on
those rules.
Because they are your flight instruments.
And you won't get concerned with vertigo and think you're
right and everybody else is wrong.
It's just like pilots who lose their ways because they don't
follow the rules.
Now is the time to obey.
When flying an airplane if you change your position by just
one degree at a time, your inner ear
cannot detect the change.
When we practice selective obedience, we change our
position relative to the Lord.
And usually by only one degree at a time.
As the deceptive forces of the adversary work on us, we
cannot detect them.
And we experience spiritual vertigo.
While it may seem like we are going in the safe direction,
we are in fact headed for disaster.
In the pre-existence, our decision the follow the Lord
was all or nothing.
Following that pattern in life through our mortal probation
will get each of us back to our Heavenly Father.