P-51 gets wooden wheels attached, so it may be moved around the ramp at the Inglewood, California plant of North American Aviation, Incorporated. When it is ready for flight tests, regular landing wheels with rubber tires will be substituted.
http://photogrammar.yale.edu/records/index.php?record=oem2002006283/PP
http://photogrammar.yale.edu/records/index.php?record=oem2002005889/PP
| 6658(6) | 10/00/1942 | Wooden wheels are attached to a P-51 ("Mustang") fighter plane so it may be moved around the ramp at the Inglewood, Calif., plant of North American Aviation, Inc. |
http://docs.fdrlibrary.marist.edu:8000/BROWSE.cgi?db=2&pos=450&inc=50
Thanks Allen!
As they say, "Necessity is the mother of invention." One way to deal with the rubber shortage. :)
ReplyDeleteWas it? I don't think so. Every plane got a set of tires. So, there was no shortage. The photo, at the time it was created, was annotated as having the wood wheels "so it may be move around the ramp" and that's a fact. I believe they got fed up with trying to push the planes on soft big tires, which is a lot of effort, and realized some cheap wood wheels would eliminate the flabby bag of air resistance and make the planes easy to push around.
DeleteYou could be right, but I got this from a WW2 forum discussing this topic:
Delete"Rubber products were at a premium and many times there were shortages. Because there were more aircraft at a given time resting on their landing gear in the final stages of assembly, it was better logistically to only put rubber on aircraft that were ready to fly."
ok, that not only makes sense, it sounds like an opinion. We know that every plane got tires. Period. We know every plane ordered had a set of tires ordered. Period. If the tire manufacturers were slower than that plane builders, doubtful, but possible, it's likely that the planes would have to wait for a new delivery of a shipment of tires.
DeleteHowever, the note, on the photo shoot notes, states it was for moving it around the ramp.
We can read into that any number of speculative notions. Why bother? That's simply speculation for the sake of amusing ourselves, or assigning answers that we feel would fit the situation in the photo.
I'd rather stick to the facts, the notes on the photo shoot
I like the Do Not Inflate notice painted onto the wood. Someone had a sense of humor.
ReplyDeletelol... I love a sense of humor!
DeleteHappens every so often. Mechanics working on B-52s sometimes graffitti the inside of the wings, that are not inspected so often. One of them apparently commented on the plane's age by redoing a cave painting in there...
DeleteIn Czechoslovakia (when that country still existed) the technical museum in Prague had wooden 'tires' on some of the motorcycles on exhibit. I got hold of the museum's manager, and offered to contact to the Danish Nimbus club, in case they wanted to donate a set of (pricey) tires for the museum's 1920s Nimbus. He politely declined, telling that while before The Wall fell it was the shortage of Western currency, that prompted them to build the (nice) wooden tires - and now that fact was part of their history too...
Deletecave painting? I love that! HA! Wow, I'd love to see a photo of it!
Deleteit makes me wish I'd done a cave painting graffiti in a deep dark hard to get into place on my first submarine. In the engine room there were some ridiculously difficult places that we had to clean... a cave painting iconic bison or rhino would have been epic
DeleteWow, wood tires as normal, and now a cultural historical thing. Dang. Sombering.
Delete