In August 1944, a young Minnesotan named Ken Dahlberg shot down three German aircraft in a single swirling dogfight, took a bullet through his oil system, and bailed out into the clouds over occupied France. Sheltered by the Resistance and — by one account — disguised as a woman, he cycled some 40 miles to Allied lines and rejoined his squadron eleven days later. The fighter he had been flying was a P-51B Mustang called Shillelagh.

Eighty-two years on, that very aircraft is flying again. In July 2026, freshly and painstakingly restored, Shillelagh climbed back into the sky and made its public debut before the crowds at EAA AirVenture Oshkosh.

The wooden club with a Merlin

Shillelagh — named after the traditional Irish fighting club — is a P-51 Mustang of the early razorback type, serial 42-106602. It served with the 353rd Fighter Squadron of the 354th Fighter Group, the celebrated “Pioneer Mustang Group,” and over four months in 1944 it flew 95 combat missions in the hands of 19 different pilots: bomber escorts to Berlin, dive-bombing runs, fighter sweeps, and patrols over the Normandy beaches.

Three kills, then a bicycle

The aircraft’s most dramatic day came on 16 August 1944. Twenty-four Mustangs of the 354th tangled with a swarm of some 80 German aircraft, and in the melee Ken Dahlberg — already a triple ace — shot down three. Then his Shillelagh took a hit, its oil pressure fell away, and he bailed out over France. What followed reads like a film: hidden by the French Resistance, he made his way back to friendly lines and was flying with his squadron again by the end of the month.

Rebuilt with the real thing

The restoration, carried out by AirCorps Aviation in Bemidji, Minnesota for the Dakota Territory Air Museum, is remarkable for how much of it is genuinely original. The team wove in an extraordinary quantity of new-old-stock North American Aviation parts — components built during the war and never fitted — and finished the aircraft in the black-and-white invasion stripes it wore over Normandy, around a freshly overhauled Packard-built Merlin engine.

Home at Oshkosh

On 18 July 2026, test pilot Warren Pietsch lifted Shillelagh off the runway at Bemidji for its first flight since the war-era airframe was rebuilt. The very next day it flew in to Oshkosh, where it stood in the warbird area as exactly what its restorers intended: a flying memorial to the men who took it to war.

Fewer than a handful of airworthy razorback P-51B Mustangs exist anywhere in the world. That one of them is Ken Dahlberg’s Shillelagh — the fighter he rode into a three-kill fight and bailed out of — makes its return to the sky feel less like a restoration and more like a resurrection.

Sources: Vintage Aviation News; AirCorps Aviation; Dakota Territory Air Museum; avgeekery; MustangsMustangs.com.