P-51's in movie "Empire of the Sun"

We used to sing a song at Happy Hour at the O Club about an
unfortunate pilot whose bombs were set for tenth of a second delay,
instead of the proper 10 seconds.

I can recall that one line was, "An F4U without a tail won't fly."

The chorus went something like:

"Ten thousand dollars going home to the folks.
Won't they be delighted!
Won't the be excited!
Think of all the things that they can buy!"

I hope that answers your question, Dan; and if anyone can remember the
entire lyrics, I'd be grateful to see them posted, for my senile mind
can no longer recall them.


Great post, Vince - love to read about this sort of thing. But seriously, can
we get back to politics now?

ducking

Your post got me thinking - I have an original poem in my Corsair file,
attached to a cartoon of a bunch of Vought engineers trying desperately to
install an early turbine engine into the nose of a late F4U... It's worth
finding, to see what the poem was about --

/theme from Jeopardy/

I found it quickly: the main idea of the page-long poem "The AU In Olde Eden
Town" is summed up below.

"Said he, "T'was a shame,
that a gal of her fame
Should be strapped to a risky-
dirty old Pratt and Whiskey

So to get her into the blue,
the thing to do
Was to give her a Nene,
and make her a Queen."

"So attention All Hands!
Just lend us your ears;
Tere's more for the U-bird
in spite of her years.

She'll still keep her hose-nose,
Jet engine or no.
And Wherever there's trouble,
be ready to go."

Ok, I'll admit, its not going down as a classic poem, but it was some anonymous
writer's tribute to the last throes of 'jet envy' that struck down thousands of
otherwise outstanding projects at the end of WWII. The stationary is from
"Chance Vought Aircraft Departmental Correspondence and neither the cartoon or
the poem are dated. Just little bits of Corsair crap from the binder... Can't
bring myself to throw it away, even though I have boxes of such things that my
wife views as trash. Worse than trash - decades-old trash. But if it was a
dress from 1978, THAT is still important enough for her to keep. Go figure.


v/r
Gordon



====(A+C====
USN SAR

Its always better to lose AN engine, than THE engine.