[Slicksadick]

Balls to the Wall
The phrase balls to the wall, meaning an all-out effort, sounds as if it is a reference to a part of the male anatomy, giving rise to some confusion as to what it originally meant. However, the original usage has nothing to do with anatomy, coming rather from the world of aviation.

On an airplane, the handles controlling the throttle and the fuel mixture are often topped with ball-shaped grips, referred to by pilots as (what else?) "balls." Pushing the balls forward, close to the front wall of the cockpit results in the most and richest mixture of fuel going to the engines and the highest possible speed.

The phrase dates to the early 1950s. Several veterans have written me noting their use of the term during the Korean War era. The earliest written citation is a bit later. The Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang contains a quote from 1966-67, in Harvey's Air War:

You know what happened on that first Doomsday Mission (as the boys call a big balls-to-the-wall raid) against Hanoi oil.
Like balling the jack, this phrase is often thought to have arisen from railroad work. A speed governor on train engines would have round, metal weights at the end of arms. As the speed increased, the spinning balls would rise--being perpendicular to the walls at maximum speed. But there is no evidence to support this story. No use of the phrase is known to exist prior to the mid-1960s, and all the early cites are from military aviation.

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[al baby]

What ever happened to WFO or WOT, go for broke peddle to the metal. floored max Q Ect bury it wind it out ect

[Bear_Slayer]

Very informative.

Thanks both.

[TexasTransplant]

Leave it to slick to not only locate our balls but also tell us where the fruit is.

TT

[Boiling point]

Thanks for the info. Another expression from aviation often attributed to football, is "the whole nine yards". Ten yards being necessary to get a first down. In actuality, the phrase comes from fighter pilots. The P-51 mustang carried 27 feet of fifty caliber rounds in its wings, so pilots, when elaborating on a particularly tough dogfight, would say, "Yea I got him, but it took the whole nine yards."