aircraft - "P-51D 44-73264.jpg" (9/9) 3.6 MBytes

wrote in
:





For what its worth, I was talking this week to a guy who worked on the line
building P-51s toward the end of the war. I think he said it was in Texas.

Two of many things he said were that:

1) they were built so well, by a workforce who understood quality
workmanship, not a single P-51 coming out of the plant was ever test flown.
They came off the line and went directly to the war.

2) He recalled several hundred being ready and waiting for the drivers to
take them to the Pacific. Then V-J day was announced. Well, he said, we
needed the aluminum... crunch, crunch, crunch.

Made me more sad than the newsreel footage I saw of the carrier hands
pushing perfectly fine aircraft over the gunnels after V-J.