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To: Homer_J_Simpson
My father has a connection to this. . . and was mentioned in the book, "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo." My dad was the civilian aircraft mechanic crew-chief for the Army Air Corp charged with tuning up the engines of the planes to be used in Jimmy Doolittle's Tokyo Raid. He was told the planes's engines need to exceed their rated performance for take off.

Dad came up with the idea of using water injection on the engines as they used on the spitfires to boost horsepower. In addition they tuned the engines to the Nth degree. If they could not get a consistent 110% performance from an engine, my Dad's crew pulled the engine and replaced it with a new one. His mention in the book by Ted Lawson came when Dad's crew was working on the Ruptured Duck. The Duck was tethered to the ground and Dad was revving the engines beyond the red line. Lawson was livid at what was being done to his beloved plane, unaware of his future mission and why theses mechanics were "abusing" his aircraft. Lawson went after my dad for the abuse.

Dad also worked on the Enola Gay and Bockscar.

One of dad's young crewmen, who lived on our block, worked on a camera chase plane shortly after it had flown through the mushroom cloud of the Nagasaki bomb, and even though they had been strongly warned to not touch anything on the plane that could leave any residue on them, made the mistake of wiping his hands on an oil rag he found in the plane. Twenty years later he started having severe problems with tumors on his hands. The tumors only developed where he had wiped that rag and no where else. His doctors were convinced the tumors were related to that incident with the rag.

16 posted on 11/16/2014 11:58:05 AM PST by Swordmaker (This tag line is a Microsoft insult free zone... but if the insults to Mac users continue...)
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To: Swordmaker

“Dad also worked on the Enola Gay and Bockscar. “


Cool ! Those guys were something.

.


17 posted on 11/16/2014 11:59:57 AM PST by Mears
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