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Post by Deleted on Aug 20, 2022 8:34:08 GMT -5
I need to find the video, but I watched one recently about the development of the P-51. The most interesting part was the boost in performance that aircraft gained when designers swapped out the Allison engine for the Rolls-Royce Merlin.
Packard won the contract to produce Merlin engines here in the States. I’m short, they had to convert the engine from what was a hand built engine with 14,000 parts into one we could mass produce using American manufacturing methods. It was a very cool story.
The father of a very good friend in high school was a P-51 pilot in WW2. He was also the dentist who pulled my wisdom teeth. 😂
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Tamarack
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Post by Tamarack on Aug 20, 2022 9:01:49 GMT -5
Perhaps the most challenging project I had in my working life was working on the cleanup of the Weldon Spring site, in St. Charles County, Missouri west of St. Louis. In the early part of WWII the government acquired several square miles of land, demolished three small towns, and built a munitions plant. The munitions plant had several lines separated by about a mile each, so that if one line blew up or was bombed (if enemy bombers could reach the middle of the US) the other lines wouldn't blow up. The munitions plant managed to spill lots of liquid TNT and its chemical cousins, dinitrotoluene isomers.
During the 1960s the Atomic Energy Commission decided to use part of the plant to process uranium, refining "yellowcake" from western mines. They ended up abandoning the plant with leaky lagoons full of radioactive sludge. Later in the 1960s there was a proposal to use the plant to make Agent Orange. Fortunately, this didn't happen or they would have spilled even more toxic chemicals.
This project was challenging both scientifically and politically. It was on the top of the divide between the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. I won't bore you with hydrogeological details or a list of all the state and federal agencies and irate citizens groups who were tripping over each other.
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Post by TKennedy on Aug 20, 2022 9:04:47 GMT -5
Jim Tordoff who was the last Podium owner’s father was a P-51 driver in Europe. Jim sent me a link to his gun camera films. Mostly ground attack. I think by the time he hit the war the Luftwaffe was largely grounded from loss of experienced pilots and fuel shortages. I can’t imagine a bigger rush than being in your early 20’s and being handed the keys to one of those.
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Post by Marshall on Aug 20, 2022 9:28:46 GMT -5
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Post by Deleted on Aug 20, 2022 10:38:26 GMT -5
The back seater is sitting where all the WWII radio gear and associated power and wiring harnesses went. Looks like a tight fit to get back there!
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Post by billhammond on Aug 20, 2022 11:29:24 GMT -5
In the late 1970s while working at the Milwaukee Sentinel, I met my dad at the EAA Fly-In, and we had the greatest time, him getting all nostalgic over all the old planes he had known and flown -- Stinsons, Bellancas, etc. -- and I later wrote a feature piece on that day, with photos, and the Sentinel wound up using it on the front page (kind of unheard of for a copy editor!). Months after that, with Dad's birthday coming up, I thought it might be worth a shot to see if I could get the Old Man a warbird ride for his gift, and wound up speaking with Paul Poberezny, grand poobah of the EAA then. Amazingly, he had seen my piece and offered for Dad a ride in his P-51, date and location TBA. Sadly, we could never get the logistics worked out, and it never happened. But Dad got a beautiful photo of Paul in his airplane, autographed, and the letter promising the ride. Dad had the photo framed and it was his pride and joy. Paul died in 2013, I think it was, but his gorgeous Mustang lives on in Oshkosh. ![](https://www.mustangsmustangs.net/p-51/p51survivors/images/P44-75007.jpg)
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Post by jdd2 on Aug 20, 2022 15:53:57 GMT -5
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