Video from the Past [31] - Building a Bomber (1941)
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- čas přidán 5. 03. 2015
- Video from the Past [31] - Building a Bomber (1941)
Documentary short film depicting the construction of the Martin B-26 medium bomber and its deployment to the U.S. Army Air Corps, including both engineering techniques and flight characteristics.
The Martin B-26 Marauder was a World War II twin-engined medium bomber built by the Glenn L. Martin Company. First used in the Pacific Theater in early 1942, it was also used in the Mediterranean Theater and in Western Europe.
After entering service with the U.S. Army, the aircraft received the reputation of a "Widowmaker" due to the early models' high accident rate during takeoffs and landings. The Marauder had to be flown at exact airspeeds, particularly on final runway approach and when one engine was out. The 150 mph (241 km/h) speed on short final runway approach was intimidating to pilots who were used to much slower speeds, and whenever they slowed down below what the manual stated, the aircraft would stall and crash.
The B-26 became a safer aircraft once crews were re-trained, and after aerodynamics modifications (an increase of wingspan and wing angle-of-incidence to give better takeoff performance, and a larger vertical stabilizer and rudder). After aerodynamic and design changes, the aircraft distinguished itself as "the chief bombardment weapon on the Western Front" according to a United States Army Air Forces dispatch from 1946. The Marauder ended World War II with the lowest loss rate of any USAAF bomber.[
It's incredible to believe that only twenty years previously we were flying biplane's built from wood and fabric! The engineering is a credit to the designers and particularly the manufacturing process.
US have always Money for War... This is your culture.
My mother Betty (RIP), worked at Boeing, Renton WA during the war. I remember her saying that for months all she did was drill holes for rivets in the upper turret area behind the flight deck. She also said that on September 2, 1945, when Japan surrendered, the assembly line was stopped and "all us women were layed off" is how she put it. Years later I would work in that same building know as the 10-17 building (aka the saw tooth building, as to its roof line). That building today is where 737 wings are built. Glad to be retired
My grandfather worked at Boeing from 1933 to 1955, worked on the 247 passenger plane, at Plant I. China Clipper in 1938 at the new Plant II. Went over to the bomber program in 1940, building B-17s first as a mechanic/ riveter then as a supervisor in the engine shop. Later transferred to Renton in 1944 to oversee B-29 work as an Assistant Superintendent. Later work the B-47 and the B-52 and the 707 prototype. I also worked there also for 33 years worked everything there from 747, 737, 707. KC-135 and Minuteman refurb, both as mechanic and supervisor also. What is ironic, is that I worked at Plant II in the same shop my grandfather did, little different when he was there, but the same shop.
@@lourowberryrowberry2343
Hi Lou, back in the mid 1990's I worked at Boeing Auburn, MR&D and was in Renton, wing line looking at at new project. I saw a fenced area in the north portion of the building and within it a B-17F. It was close to lunch and I walked over and ended up talking to maybe a dozen retired Boeing guys and WWII vets. These guys had all fought in the 17 during the war and were restoring the old gal. The plane looked brand new inside, it sure was something. I even crawled back to the tail gunner position. I remember seeing the rubber fuel tank bladders on a bench. I guess they would collapse as the fuel was pulled from them (no air) within the bladder so no boom if a tracer round past through the wing. There was like five or six bladders on the beach. Anyway lots of stories from our heroes
One question I've been really curious about, after watching all these videos on war production.. "did folks like your mother understand the critical contributions her work meant to winning the war? Did she take pride in it?" As a veteran, I know the commitment and sacrifice the military brings to the table.. but what could the military have done if Hitlers production outpaced our production? From what we saw with Germany, not much. If it wasn't for our production, I really believe we would have lost the war. Sorry she was laid off on VJ day, that's a sad ending to her contribution
We have treated those women and the returning Vets from every war atrociously. Many women started finding jobs after WWII, as they loved making their own $ rather than having a husband dole it out. Vets that were told their "jobs will be waiting for you" found out that their replacements were kept, often making less than the Vet did before the war. Such a shame to kick people to the curb like that.
My father and mother both worked for Boeing Wichita, tooling up for the B-52. That is such a stark circumstance to be laid off so fast. Enjoy your retirement!!
As a mechanical engineer in a way I wish I was born early enough to work in those aircraft factories it must have been a beehive of activity. Back in the mid 80's I worked at a company called The Bristol Company in Waterbury Connecticut. I went to the print room and pulled the earliest drawing I could find which was dated in 1933 which was a sepia paper drawing all brown and a bit crumbly. During the war they made a device call the thermo-humidifier if I correctly recall which were used to set the depth charges in the navy during WWII. This factory was huge 4 stories brick structure that would take 10 minutes to walk from one end to the other. When this place was in full swing everything was made in house nothing was farmed out. By the time I got there it was all idle, dark,dusty and was very eerie walking thru the factory. I was in my mid 20's at the time. One day was walking to the model shop through this maze of dark pathway past all this silent equipment where I was startled walking around a corner and stumbled upon this grungy bald heavy set man wearing overalls who was working this machine whom I never seen before. It was like something out of a Hollywood horror movie and looked totally out of place. It scared me and I kept walking wanting to get away as fast as i could. I never saw him again and to this day was wondering if I saw a ghost from the past, it was one of the strangest encounters I ever had. Surprisingly enough, there were a few mechanical engineers, the checker was still working there Syme Donahue and Jim Lombardi and the print room clerk who was there for 47 years since high school. All of whom were employed there during WWII. The story they were telling me about everything that went on there were amazing. Soon after I started working at the Bristol Company which back then was called Bristol Babcock (yes, Babcock as in the British company still on operation) they moved out of that factory to Watertown CT. Soon afterwards some homeless people were living in the factory and started a fire burning the factory to the ground. It was a beautiful building. I was honored to work at such a place with its long history
One B-26 bomber changed the course of the entire Pacific War. After taking serious damage as it attacked Admiral Nagumo's Japanese flagship Kaga during the Battle of Midway, the pilot likely tried to ram into the bridge, missing the Admiral by a few feet before the B-26 crashed into the sea. Within a few minutes, Admiral Nagumo decided to launch a second strike at Midway Island, delaying flight operations as torpedoes were swapped for bombs. During the swap, the American carrier-based dive bombers surprised the Japanese and destroyed the carriers Kaga, Akagi, and Soryu within 10 minutes of each other. I wonder if we are seeing that B-26 being constructed a year before the Battle of Midway. (See the recent Battle of Midway book "Shattered Sword" for more.)
I write this comment totally tongue in cheek, at last I know why replacement parts never seemed to fit when we got them straight from the manufacturer, American, British, French, and German producers must have sent their work force to the same training centres. But seriously, there were times when a direct replacement component wouldn’t fit no matter how much fettling and pro-cushion adjustments you made, but they were few and far between, the skill that it took to make parts from scratch is almost unbelievable, and not something you learn overnight, believe me I did make smaller parts, and that was hard enough to get right. Total respect to those who did and do make precision parts. Thanks for sharing this interesting and informative historical film. 😀👍🇬🇧🏴
P.S My instructors at trade training schools would be turning in their graves if they saw the use of adjustable spanner’s in the assembly process, it seems to be the norm in a lot of company films, but I was always taught to use the right tool for the right job, still, there was a war on don’t you know. 😀👍
To Peter regarding the exploding rivets , back in the 50's and 60's my father worked for republic aviation and used to bring me home a ton of those rivets ,I used to wrap them in paper and set the paper on fire and the rivets would explode like firecrackers ,BTW the rivets came in different colors,I guess to denote the size of the charge ,red,blue green ,and no color [ he was building the f-105 thunder cheift ] Thanks John K
cool dad..
I spent many years in the RAF and fitted so many different types of rivet, but the exploding rivet demonstrated in this film was awesome, and ingenious, I wish they still used them in my time doing structural repairs, would have made the job a lot more fun, and easier. We had blind rivets as well as solid but those explosive ones would have been great, although I think we would have employed them for other things, practical jokes would have been so much fun using them. Thanks for this very interesting and informative video.
I love the bit about the “skilled mechanic” checking the fuel lines, using an adjustable spanner (wrench) if I had ever used one of those in my work in the RAF my bosses would have had a total and complete meltdown, using only the right size tool was allowed, in my later years, if I had caught anyone doing the same it would have been me having a complete dicky fit, I learnt my lessons the hard way, as did some of those that it was my job to teach them the right way to do the job, and boy, did some of them like learning things the hard way, but they always came round to my way, and I expect some of them went on to be the master and impart their skills and knowledge onto the next generation.
First thing I thought too with the adjustable
This is the first time i have seen this kind of historical videos. Amazing ...
Love these historical films, thanks for posting.
The first flight was
Amazing the temperature extremes and flexing the metal goes through, rivets are tough.
What an absolutely, positively, fascinating film, reminds me totally how very lucky to be born American and have the privilege of living in USA.
But sadly today America split apart so badly.
In Chicago there was a plant known as the Dodge plant, now known as Ford City/ There was lower levels to the complex. This was were the B-29 engines were made. My mother was part of the assembly of those engines.
Dear Charles, My father, Walter Widlak, also worked at that plant as a machinist. Best wishes, Fred Widlak.
@@fredericwidlak2071 They were a great generation. Take care Fred.
That was the video I watched before this one. 30 minutes after Japan surrendered, the plant was almost totally idle. For a few days they finished off engines that were in progress, and for which they had all the parts, then that stopped too. 19,000 employees, and the whole place shut down within a few days.
That's where my parents met during the war. I think that the Tucker car was also produced there in the late '40s.
@@elultimo102 www.history.com/this-day-in-history/carmaker-preston-tucker-dies
Always fascinated about how such marvelous and complex technological devices are constructed from what starts off as bauxite dug up from the earth.
You should have seen the Kaiser offloading dock in Baton Rouge next to the old bridge
Have you seen what we do with sand today ? God dam insane I tell ya
I put even unused staples or staples I tear from paper (before I recycle the paper) into recycling because I have witnessed the destruction from mining. And to think; trees and topsoil are labeled "overburden".
What would be swell is if corporations cared a little bit more for that which sustains us and less about just growing their profits.
'26 - one of my favorite planes of the era. Super powerful. Pilots needed special training after they kept crashing them.
Their training was an issue, and the rising body count convinced the Pentagon to put special effort into retooling instruction. The B26 had its quirks, as well, and could kill cowboy pilots.
The wings were also lengthened to overcome problems. After that, it had an exemplary record.
Martin B-26 Marauder
Best manufacturing film I have ever seen!
11:25 Sure, the best way to look for something is to roam aimlessly with a flaming torch. Well done!
Explosive rivets, thanks for posting, this is the first time I have seen these.
Back in the 50's, my dad had a box of these. Why, I have no idea. That is, he had them until my friends and I found them, and discovered that you could set them off by hitting them with a hammer on the garage floor. He wasn't pleased.
Those old time 'explosive' blind rivets were much more novelty than anything... and I'm pretty sure they were declared obsolete & unsuitable for future design eons ago. They were never intended to be structural, kind of 'pop rivet' like; and the residues they left in inaccessible areas created intolerable corrosion issues. Even in the day, there were far superior blind riveting methods available.
@@rwbishop used them in the army in the mid 80s or we had them might have been left over from ww2
Been replaced these days by cherry blind rivets that are installed using compressed air (normally).
Modern pop rivets work better I think.
The Marauder was one of my favorite medium bombers. It just had that look!
Priceless ...
Fascinating. Thanks for posting
Very Nice! Thank you !
Proud of those guys!
Amazing.
5:53 Explosive Rivets ! Finally I find out how those blind rivets were done !!
"5:53 Explosive Rivets ! Finally I find out how those blind rivets were done !!"
Explosive rivets saw very limited use... and largely considered more a novelty than anything.
Amongst numerous other things, they were only suitable for non structural applications and the residues they ejected later caused objectionable corrosion issues.
"Tens of thousands of dollars"... I'll take two :-)
Interesting to me was the movable drill press to drill the wing spars. I now understand the evolution to the drill jig fixture for the B747 spar. The fixture uses a drive able cart to go from hole to hole.
B747?
@@bobgreene2892 Boeing
👍👍👍RIGHT.....🇮🇳🙏🌹
The B26...known to snap over on it's back if you got it too slow. Not a good slow flight airplane. Kudos to the guys building them though...such tremendous willpower and drive!
B26 Marauder got a bad rap as a widow-maker.
It did kill many trainee crews who were learning to fly it.
Interestingly, once the crew figured what they could and could not do, things changed.
Marauder squadrons had the lowest crew loss rate per 1,000 sorties of all the U.S.A.A.F. two and four engined bombers during WWII.
Wow, I thought magnaflux was a new technology...I was in the airforce from 99-2010....the sheet metal guys still use the same tools as this vid, probably the exact same. I was shocked when the gun guys said they still used WWII barrels on the Ghost II 130s....I laughed at the beginning when the announcer said “with precision” and then the molten metal was splashing everywhere. “Gloves...?, who the hell needs those things” (as they lift razor sharp sheet metal that weighs about 500 lbs). Good vid👍🏻
john smith The biggest difference I see between that factory and similar modern facilities is the lack of safety glasses and hearing protection.
I laughed when they said the foundry worker was "fully protected by his suit made of asbestos"! 😳 And neither him or the guys pouring the molten zinc had any kind of face masks! 🤪
Did anyone else notice the guy standing in the room full of lit brazing torches, swing his torch right by the other guys head!? 😵
John Morgan My first job out of college was at a mold making company. I’d watch guys pouring aluminum molds, in full protective suits but wearing tennis shoes and trying to avoid the stuff they spilled on the floor.
@@miked1765 I observed at 16:09 of of the guys spray painting on the factory floor without a face-mask nor googles. The others did not have googles...I guess in a war, health and safety is secondary to production....
It's now been longer since we landed on the moon than it was between the Wright Bros. flight and our landing on the moon. (2018)
67 yrs vs 50 years?
Watch this video and then watch a video on aircraft production in late 1944 and you'll definitely notice how much faster the lines worked and how more automated the process had become in just three years!
Notice that throughout the whole airplane building process, nobody checked their cellphones!......amazing!!!
Arnold Ziffle They were on hands free.
Gee, Wally, what a STUPID FUCKING OFF-TOPIC POST you made there! Modern aircraft factories usually prohibit personal recording devices on the shop floor, not that you'd give a fuck. You and the cocksmokers who clicked "like" probably thought it was insightful but it only displays your ignorance of aviation and desire to shitpost.
I was gonna say something about this kid we had on the C17 sub assy line but never mind...
Arnold Ziffle it's a good thing,we might have lost the war.
Notice that throughout the whole airplane building process, nobody had to check into drug rehab to remain employable...
After watching the video about the Willow Run Facility built by Ford Motor Co. dedicated June 16, 1941. Its amazing how much automation and simplification was put to use in a new factory. At its peak production they produced one B-24 bomber every 55 minutes.,.,.,.,.
Took a while to ramp up to that level. The joke was..."will it run".
Whoa! I wonder if that was FlakBait?the old man said the wings should have been a bit more longer.🤗 absolutely beautiful!Revell's 1/48 scale in D-Days color scheme was my 2nd favorite 🤗
Are these videos available on DVDs? If so where can I purchase it?
super nice video!
I'm in the UK, a place called Chadderton, I live about a mile away from a factory where many, if not most, Avro Lancaster Bombers were built.
Wonderful a technician was hammering the aircraft wing .
The basis of victory in war is the ability to put materiel and men in the air, field or on the sea faster than the enemy can kill them. It is the duty of a country to see that its fighters have every possible thing they need, in quantities sufficient to make victory possible. It is a military man's duty to go in harm's way. The men who few these planes flew directly into the face of enemy fire. As do the soldiers of today who are subject to enemy fire the moment they step off the plane in the Middle East. The idea that somehow the fighters in WWII are in some way more courageous or took their duty more seriously is just wrong. The tree of liberty has indeed been watered by the blood of martyrs. Whether the wars they fought were wise or not, their courage and dedication deserve our absolute respect and every bit of material support we can give them.
I can't figure out whether I'm supposed to salute after reading this gooey panegyric, or just buy some war bonds in the theater lobby on my way out.
"The soldiers of today" are part of a an all-volunteer military. They have a choice of enlisting and fighting in the sandbox, like looking for imaginary weapons in Iraq, or of chasing Taliban in Afghanistan for 18 years. BIG difference.
you sound like a lot of fun to hang around with.
Opinions may vary. Not all are entirely credible.
The tree of the banksters and military industrial complex is all we are watering with the blood of our young now.
At 1:27 the men wore asbestos clothing..... Wow, how times have changed. Great video, thanks for posting.
Tightening fuel lines with a catch all!
"catch all" = pipe wrench
I've heard them referred to as a "fits all."
I am always amazed at the feats Engineers and crews did to assemble such planes. The same thing goes for ships and subs- all those wires, parts & rivets had to be perfect or people would die. SALUTE!
Excelente trabalha pra força aeria
My grandmother worked on the line making B-17 engines at a Pratt and Whitney plant in East Hartford, CT
Wow it needs a lot of knowledge skills and precision!
Fantástico 😎
спасибо
thank!!!!
interesting and amazing
No ear, eye or hand protection in sight.
No face guard or required clothing to prevent snagging in machinery.... a different time indeed.
Which tells us the much-maligned OSHA ancestor had a fundamentally valid mission. Wearing an asbestos suit and heavy mask/helmet, standing over a cauldron of molten aluminum, must have taken a toll of many workers.
Your brain and common sense we're your OSHA
What we do will appear primitive and quaint 80 years from now. It doesnt mean we or they were backward - both doing their/our best at the time.
The narration at 1:25 says it all.
But they did paint a nice warning on the big press "See that all hands are clear before operating press". If you lose a hand, it's not our fault.
All in this film and announcer have aged and died as well as most of the men who flew these planes. They are Martin B-26 "medium bombers " built in Baltimore.
Everyone dies. Why is that shit a CZcams meme?
The B-26 Marauder were built by Glen Martin, Omaha NE, aswell. 🇩🇰
WOW - this is when all Americans worked together for the good of global freedom. Sadly that’s not the case today.
The USA has long since lost the benefits of segregation....
Really nice! I like how the announcer avoided jargon and technical terms that may not have been familiar audience of the time. And I love those old orchestral scores! Excellent music!
The Martin Plant just outside of Baltimore. Some of these bldgs. are still there as well as the sea ramp
Skilled technician using a crescent wrench rounding off the fuel line nut.
Exactly what I was thinking. Surely to God they had line wrenches back then...
hey its government work !!!!!!
If you roll the thumbwheel the worm gear can hold the jaws with less backlash than conventional open end wrenches. Been there, done that and didn't fuck up hardware. Retired career USAF maintainer here who also knows that trick works with "Ford" wrenches popular from WWII to this day.
Not a lot of them, and military equipment of the era was designed for easy field maintenance.
That's too funny!!
Muito interessante o vídeo.
No speaky da english?
No safety glasses and no hearing protection unlike today’s factories.
40’s starts a industrial revolution absolutely
I think they started this right after WWI. Probably by 1938 they started on theses plane if not sooner.
Was it really necessary to add the vertical black lines?
Interesting how many times the term "ship" was still used by then.
In their young days both planes and tanks took much inspiration from ships. The M3 Lee for example had a sort of automatic gyroscopic driving thing. The idea was to set a speed and direction and the tank would drive by itself in a streight line in that direction. This device which was ofcourse taken from ships, was utterly useless and deleted after early peoduction (just like the hull mounted fixed machine guns).
Airship ,likely from Dirigible days.theyd only been Flyin less then 40 years .
It's used currently among pilots
In those early years what was being built at McDonnel Douglas in the Long Beach area? My father was born in 1941. Enlightening video.
Was there a shortage of propellers? Surprised they weren’t installed inside on the production line.
Вот это машина! Не то что красавица, но лучший фронтовой бомбардировщик 2МВ.
Вау! Давно знал, что есть технология взрывающихся заклепок, но сейчас увидел впервые!
Wow! For a long time I knew that there is a technology of exploding rivets, but now I saw it for the first time!
Seen a few safety concerns, especially in the welding area!
Only a few 😂
Apparently the concept of eye protection was not an issue in this era.
Karl Laun - They had bulletproof corneas .
Hope everyone is happy with political correctness
Safety was paramount
Learned something new from this video: Explosive Rivets. Frozen Rivets. Wonder if that technique was classified at the time.
Non structural 'explosive' rivets were more novelty than anything, along the lines of modern pop rivets, and created corrosion issues. The frozen rivets , or 'ice box' rivets were of an aluminum alloy that would remain soft & malleable enough to drive without cracking if kept cold after heat treatment... then harden once allowed to warm and 'age' a few hours. There is a good bit more to them... and they're still used to this day. I'm pretty sure all above was fairly well known by the WWII era.
@@rwbishop - Thanks for this interesting technical background info.
@@rwbishop I dunno about that. That’s not how metal reacts to cold. I pretty sure the rivets were chilled so they would shrink and then when exposed to ambient temperatures, they would expand. It’s physics.
@@williamsimmons152 Please don't just take my word for it! I'm just some CZcams commenter!
Go to the Wikipedia 'Rivet' entry, then look at the second paragraph under the 'Solid/round head rivets' heading for a quick overview.
And/or do a Google search on 'ice box rivet', and you'll find reams of info.
They're still actively used to this day for new construction & repairs; and freely available to anyone through scores of vendors.
@@rwbishop I ‘m not questioning the ice box rivets. Just saying that the physics of metal or aluminum alloy is that when metals are in lower temperatures, they get more brittle. They shrink in size. They are not malleable at LOW temperatures.
Eye injuries must have been many. I can't imagine machining without safety glasses, let alone doing it old school without them.
I’m an Industrial Hygienist. The total lack of PPE had me squirming the whole time.
There's this great guy living here in my village in Denmark. Ed, he used to be a bombsight in one of these Marauders, bombing Berlin. He told me, he did this at the age of 19. Easy to find the way back to the french base, he said. "We just followed the track of fires from crashed planes"
Mechanic tightening a gas line nut with an adjustable wrench!
yeah, saw that too and the narrator says this step requires "unusual" caution as opposed to "usual" caution I guess.
@@joep1535 Did they even have the proper gas-line wrenches then?
It very nice very power force power full air force I like it very very much
Martin Marauder I think !
bien precarias la seguridad en el trabajo. Guantes, ropa adecuada, etc.
Great effort to stand up
Verdade
1:27 " ...where men wear asbestos clothing for protection..." wtf
Yup. Asbestos was common everywhere. It was perfectly OK until some doctor invented Malignant mesothelioma.
Neat
Thank You 🙏 Henry Ford!
Thank henry ford for making war machines to kill innocents? you need a reset sir the patriot... smh
these planes were all built by hand took many people to build them and many are still flying today
...sadly and unfortunately, many are NOT still flying today...these are Martin B-26's...Kermit Weeks has the only airworthy example, and it hasn't flown in years..so it may not really be "airworthy" any more...not many exist in museums, either...we destroyed a vast majority of these aircraft ourselves after the war... :(
Back when we could actually build something
Back when absenteeism was a huge problem in Defense Plants. You literally could not get fired for poor attendance because of the shortage of manpower.
And thinking that many bombers were shot down after only two or three flights.
A lot of workand time building them, for being shot down in a snap ...
During the WW2 more than 7000 aircrafts of the U.S. were shot down. Many of them in his first flight.
Yes it was the sheer numbers of bombers and fighters that were manufactured
The mantra for fighter pilots was..."fly 5 and stay alive." Fly 5 missions as makee learnee then you're own your own. With all the training stateside from war proven pilots most of them did survive.
Absolutely amazing! What a shame some of these got shot down. What a terrible waste.
Impressing precission!
US Quality 💖
But... Lack of primer on inside parts..?
These airplanes were not built to last forever. Structural integrity and high production was the main idea.
Primer would have added weight. Later in the war, after air superiority had been attained, the paint was left off altogether to reduce weight and increase range and bomb loads. Remember, these were lead based paints back then. Lead is heavy.
The workers wear Asbestos clothing...a job not unlike cooking in your own kitchen... impurities rise to the top and are burned off . Yup
Sure reminded me of my mom's cooking.
Oh My God, he forgot to safety wire the sump plug at 3.51,,"B17 limps home with one seized engine"
Having been employed in the at Hymatic engineering in Britain as a progress chaser often taking small aircraft components to Birmingham to be anodized to prevent the aluminum oxidizing, which is detrimental to aircraft safety.
I wonder if Marauder was the 1st medium bomber to have a tail gunner as part of the original design.
The B-25 had a tail gunner.
bombardier, por favor!
In that's time tools & parts was made in USA
Good quality
Amazing the work ethic back then. Ppl now want to sit home and get handouts
I wonder how many workers lost body parts....some of those machines look deadly....
15:33 Is that technician using a crescent wrench on the fuel line?
"crescent wrench" = "Shifting Spanner" or "Adjustable Wrench" depending from where you come from.
The trouble is, because a crescent wrench is adjustable to fit different screw hexes, they are not as precise as a wrench manufactured for a certain size, and sometimes the crescent wrenches slip over and ruin the hex, especially if they are adjusted too large.
Wouldn't let anyone to use one on my car:)
Scary, or was it just for the camera?
Roger Surf Good Point! This man was described as a skilled technician... 😀
Maybe they decided to use this adjustable wrench to save time.
I saw that I have a A&P you use what fits it and that would have been a tubing wrench 🔧!
Back when we could build these quickly and with good quality! Now we could not get people to work in a plant . And take pride in what they did . We could not gear up for a war if we had to now and we might have to !
This is the last war that America won a gold medal.
If the USA used this overwhelming position of power in Afghanistan, the war would there have been won in the first year . Even so, winning the peace is much cheaper and preferable.
What plan to win the peace...there was no plan; other than to loot the oil reserves.
Such was the state of technology: you're going to penetrate enemy air space traveling under [well under!] 300 miles per hour, in a formation of dozens of aircraft. If your contrails don't give you away, the engine noise surely will. The enemy will scramble interceptors capable of almost 400 miles per hour. They will shoot 20mm cannon slugs at you. Just one round hitting a vulnerable portion of the airframe or propulsion system will probably kill your whole crew. Oh, they'll be firing "flak" at you from the ground, too, and there's not a damned thing you can do about it - no evasive action possible during the bomb run. After all that, you MIGHT hit the target. If you do, you MIGHT cause enough damage to put the target out of action for a period of time. If you do, it MIGHT make a strategic contribution to the war effort.
The U.S. Eighth Air Force lost more men fighting the air war over Europe than the U.S. Marine Corps lost fighting the Japanese in all the battles in the Pacific. And still those airman continued to fight on. Truly the Greatest Generation.
You sound a bit like a Nazi apologist. If not, I apologize, but to deny the heroism of our bomber crews isn't cool. It's easy with hindsight and numbers to say perhaps "it wasn't worth it, too dangerous" but to say their contribution wasn't meaningful is simply inaccurate.
KurtB: I don't think Russ was knocking the US Army Air Forces. I think he was simply pointing out the reality of the bombing campaign in WW2 given the technological limitations of the time. It has been argued that the greatest effect of this campaign against Germany was that it forced the Luftwaffe to pull back squadrons that were being used to support and protect troops on the Eastern and Western fronts so that they could defend the homeland. This move did indeed cause immense losses to the U.S. and British bomber forces in aircrew and aircraft, but it made life easier for the Soviet and Allied ground forces fighting their way into the belly of the beast. Also, the Luftwaffe's battles against the bombers, and later, the fighter escorts, steadily attrited the Germans of their most experienced pilots until the Nazis were forced to send up barely-trained youths which, by that time, were basically cannon-fodder for Allied fighter pilots. Boiled down, it was basically attritional warfare in the sky, and the Germans just didn't have the manpower to keep up.
I agree with you that it was a war of attrition by 1944. People bring up documents that claim German production INCREASED over the bombing campaign. I'll agree with that. What I will add is simply "what would those numbers have been WITHOUT the bombing." They would have been perhaps 3X to 10X what we saw in 1944. To deny the effectiveness of the bombing is to deny simple math and reality to boot.
Kurt - You're absolutely correct. Without the bombing campaign against German aircraft production, the numbers of planes the Germans would have produced would definitely have been much, MUCH higher. But even with the daylight bombing campaign focused on disrupting German fighter production, the Germans biggest problems was training up pilots to fly the huge numbers of fighters they produced. It's an undeniable fact that a fighter plane's most important component is its pilot and the Germans just never established a training regimen that could supply enough trained pilots to keep up with their losses. As for the Americans, and to a lesser extent, the British and Canadians, their air forces instituted a policy of periodically pulling their most experienced pilots out of the line and sending them back home to train up newer cadres of pilots working their way through combat flight school. Although many of these veteran pilots complained bitterly about being pulled out the fight (and there were lots of aces among them), orders were orders and they duly trained up huge numbers of young, inexperienced air warriors. On the other hand, the Germans kept their experienced pilots at the front, where they were instructed to train the recent flight school graduate/newbies while in actual combat conditions. Most of the "Experten" and their charges flew and fought until they died. in 1939 Hitler planned for a short, extremely violent Blitzkrieg and so did his Luftwaffe. They had no backup plan to train the massive numbers of pilots required for the long war of attrition that they eventually had to deal with.
Cooking operations in our own kitchens… he must have seen my wife’s cooking. 😭
Is this B-26 ?
Asbestos protective clothing that great!!!!
Thats exactly what I thought!
They would of burned up without it, wouldn’t have lived long enough to sue the evil capitalist.