On Dec 28, 5:59*am, Dana M. Hague wrote:

Why would you want to? *It wouldn't be a very good airplane for sport
flying; it was desinged for one purpose only: *to be the smallest in
the world (and it isn't even that, any more). *
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Because the guy making the engines (McCulloch? Some damn thing... two-
stroker) ...hadn't received a Stop Order!! Seriously! VE day and no
Stop Order, the VJ Day and STILL no Stop Order, and they're cranking
out that crazy little engine as fast as they can... ball-bearing
crankshaft and a Ford carburetor and they were going right from the
assembly line to New/Surplus distributors because the warehouses were
all full and we had enough drones to train another wars-worth of
gunners and then some, because The Jets Are Coming (was on everyone's
lips) and guys were backing off, lookking at Ol Betsy, wondering how
they convert her to run a Jet Engine because the Supply Guy over at El
Segundo... who worked for Jack What's-his-name -- finally got
permission to install a Real jet engine in the Project Plane instead
of that copy of an English Nine (or Neine, or whatever... ) because we
already knew that the Russians were going co-axial instead of
centrifugal and it turned the Fat Bellied Project Plane into an F-86
and just in time, too. Except no one told PW or whoever, to stop
building those centrifugal jets, which is why Grumman had to go with
them for the Super Panther (which became the F9F dash 8). But they
thot it would become New/Surplus the same way.

Those were some very, VERY crazy years, just after the War... because
the war was NOT over, inside the X-sheds, despite what everyone was
saying. We had all those German jets up at the dry lakes and the real
Bob Hoover was blowing everyone away and the Riding School was going
full blast (and I got some pitchers to prove it). And the Window of
Opportunity came roaring along and everyone was looking for a New Car
and a bigger refrigerator and an automatic washing machine (it had
Spin Dry!) and all that other Neat Stuff and the Window went roaring
right on passed... and we missed it. Not once, but several times.
Chopping up brand new airplanes, melting them down to make the wiring
for the next Levittown, so's they'd burn down when the aluminum wires
reacted with the brass fittings... and the General in Alaska asked,
what as I supposed to do with all these airplanes, now that we won't
allow those Russian ladies to fly them outta here... and Washinton
said: Burn them. And that's what he did. Except for half a dozen
less one, which landed at A****er and got 'arrested.' (I didn't know
you could 'arrest' a DC-6. But they did. The others made it to El
Segundo, then to Tijuana in the middle of the night where they got
stuffed full of P-51's before going to Mexico, where they set until
they got charts for Natal and Ghana and places like that. Then they
disappeared. But the P-51's ended up flying wing with the Me-109's
and the Focke-Wulf-190's (?) Is that right? Mustangs and Fw-190-3's
in the same formation? And everyone is fighting to get to fly the
German iron because it's got an ejection seat! ...which is pretty damn
dumb because no one is wearing a parachute anyway!!

And they were fighting Spitfires?

Go on, pull the other one. But that's what happened, trying to keep
promises that were made in 1917 and had been broken by both sides...
and still are, come to think of it.

Funny kinda war. The idea was to 'transfer' the DC-6's to Don
Douglas, cuz of some sort of political BS in CANADA? Yep, in Canada.
Because they wanted to put Rolls Royce engines in them and call them
British Built... without bothering to check the MTBO of the Rolls as
compared to those nice round engines. So someone said 'Get it outta
here,' meaning to move it to where it couldn't be seen from the
highway. (Remember the camouflage netting? The stuff OVER the
highways? Yeah... me too :-) And this Jewish Bag-man was running
around in a blue, 1940 Ford Sedan with a pig-skin 'doctor's bag'
except it was full of MONEY, and in the back seat was two guys who
would look at you but NEVER SPOKE. (Talk about eery!) One worked for
my 'Uncle John,' the other one worked for Harry Hopkins. Give them a
nice, clean, just off the assembly line P-51 and he would give you
lots of MONEY. They you would put the Mustang into the DC-6, along
with miscellaneous stuff, most of which was yellow with GERMAN dials
and came down from Palmdale (Why? Because they had lotsa airplanes
but not enough GPU's and tow-bars that fit and stuff like that). Then
came the Vanishing Act, down to Mexico, across the Caribbean and
finally across the Atlantic, then Africa and the neatest one of all,
pulling a Fuel Stop at a BRITISH field out in the desert where you
couldn't do anything because everything that wasn't booby-trapped was
mined! Then the man in the funny shorts would say 'Good luck, chaps."
and you were free to take off at night and fly past the hotels so that
you had to look UP to see their top floors... and ended up... not in
British-controlled Palestine but in Money-Bag controlled 'Israel.'
Where they grew oranges!

Seriously: 'Product of Israel' My dad figured they cost about ten
dollars per orange by the time they got to New York, where you could
buy one for a dime.

Dad wasn't political, he was a mechanic, who had tickets for
everything from Armstrong-Siddley (??) to Junkers-Jumo (all marks,
including some truly goofy stuff such as the Jumo 205C which didn't
have an ignition system to FLY... but needed one to START) and for
the Daimler-Benz DB-605 (most marks but not all), and had a habit of
****ing people off because after working on the airframes and the
powerplants he'd walk away, leaving them to mount the bomb racks and
gun pods and all that sort of stuff, saying "Not my war," wiping his
hands on a grease rag. So they refused to pay him. So he shrugged
and hitch-hiked home and in later years, refused to work for them
until they paid him, which they never did, so he never did.

-R.S.Hoover