In attach-286 you can see the pilot's and copilot's escape hatches of which I spoke in an earlier thread. You can now see the two cam shafts that lift the leading edge of the hatches so that they can blow off. Initially they were skinned over but now they have skylight glass.
I was there in '44 and I used to see them shooting landings in B-26's at Hondo , we were a short flight away from Laredo.
My father was the base commander for the radar station at Sweetwater, Texas in 1955-1957 at the old WASP home base, Avenger Field. Now the site of the WASP Museum. Dad began building Sweetwater AFS in 1954 while at Lackland AFB, San Antonio, TX and opened the site in 1955/56. This was part of the old south facing DEW line to detect Soviet bombers attacking from the south and had a co-located Nike Hercules battery for part of its active service. Decommissioned in 1969.
I knew that the Japanese had bombed the west coast and killed Americans using similar techniques, but I had no idea the British did this as well March 20, 1942 The beginning of Operation Outward. British attack program on Germany using free-flying hydrogen aerostats carrying either steel wire to damage high-voltage power lines or three incendiary devices designed to ignite forest fires. Image Unavailable, Please Login
There's a rather sad story about a Wasp who flew a new P-51 out of Hawthorne in LA where they were made during WW2, went over Santa Monica Bay as she was ferrying it, and was never seen again. We forget too easily.
Caption: A German Messerschmitt 262A-1 jet-propelled fighter at the Rheinmain Airport, near Frankfurt, Germany, 1945. The first jet-propelled plane captured intact, it was flown over Allied lines and surrendered by its pilot who was supposed to be testing it at the time. Image Unavailable, Please Login
Many have no knowledge that the structure of this airplane was built of steel and wood. Aluminum was almost totally unobtainable in Germany at that time.
