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To: Dashing Dasher
22 of 25. I'm bummed.

Who knew the Italians ever had an air force? (I knew they did, but never had heard the name).

Who knew what German plane had been modified 60 times? Hasn't EVERY plane been modified 60 times?

I spent a year restoring a couple of P-38 Lightnings, and it's amazing to see the modifications. It was one of the first nose draggers, so they didn't understand the forces on the nose gear very well. It kept breaking in service, so the nose gear attach was modified a bunch of times.

They had a flutter on the tail, and discovered a fairing on the fuselage fixed it. But the original fairing that was built into the structure was retained, while every airplane had a huge fairing dzus fastened over the top of the original.

Even the angle of incidence of the tail was changed. Take a look at any P-38 you see where the tail boom attaches at the tail, and you'll see an angle where the skin doesn't line up. They never bothered to change the skins, but merely drilled the attach screws to the new angle on every plane.

43 posted on 11/08/2005 7:53:37 AM PST by narby (Hillary! The Wicked Witch of the Left)
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To: narby

That one was probably arguable too. They had changed both the FW and Me-109 designs plenty of times. The Ju-88 was probably the most changed however.

Loved those Jane's illustrated guide books growing up.


48 posted on 11/08/2005 8:12:51 AM PST by Steelerfan
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To: narby
Who knew what German plane had been modified 60 times?

I was sure the answer was the 109, but that wasn't even a choice. I missed that one with my 190 guess.

58 posted on 11/08/2005 9:00:44 AM PST by PAR35
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