by waaytoomuchintothis » Thu Oct 25, 2012 9:23 pm
There was a guy we used to be in touch with when I worked on the P-51 in Louisville who lived in Southern Indiana who had lots of great stuff. He had 3 Storch aircraft (Skorzeny's STOL that rescued Mussolini from the mountain) from WWII. He had been re-machining parts for them for years. Any chance that's the same guy?
Yep. Those Merlins got bigger every time I got close to one. On the P-51 we had a scaffolding for me to stand on to set the valves (48 of them, each one as big as a drink coaster, the tappets looked like cold chisels). On a P-38 at Oshkosh, it was disorienting, because I wasn't on a slant relative to the engine as I always was on the Mustang. I still have my British Standard Whitworth wrenches that got me the job on the Mustang.