Warbird Information Exchange

Saw this on PopSci.com today:


July 1947: "Warplane wing tanks, which can be picked up as war surplus for about $5, make excellent back-yard wading pools. The pool shown was cut from a wing tank made for a B-17 bomber. It was laminated neoprene and cloth and required a couple of hours of cutting time, but it was so stiff that no frame was needed for rigidity."


http://www.popsci.com/military-aviation ... ading-pool

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Scott Greenfield

Must have been nice to bathe in oily rubery water for the first season.

Makes for great sunblock on top of that

Different mind set back then was it

Neat snippet of information regarding a re-use of war surplus material for its day. But, didja see the dumb-arse comment from the retard who'd commented on the article he or she read from a half-century ago? Here's the text verbatim:

"How did the builder of this pool ensure that chemical residue left inside the wing, such as trace levels of lead, not reach the little kid? I know gasoline was leaded back in those days,but I am not sure about aircraft gas. Though I would guess it was, because metallurgy on aircraft engines weren't much better than automobiles.

Even if the risk is minute, I am not risking my child health, because I am too cheap to buy a $20 wading pool."

This is precisely the kind of mentality we have today that prohibits surplus material from ever reaching the public sector, whether it be KC-130 airframe parts to something as mundane as vehicles, tents or clothing.

The collective thought is that there's gotta be some sort of risk factor associated with surplus material that'll involve some degree of remuneration, perverse innovation, contamination, infestation and no doubt it may lead somehow, someway, or quite possibly to, "procreation..." I mean, it's gotta be in there somehow, right?

I am sure if we investigated dumb-arse and his or her comments closely enough we could no doubt track it back to the very contamination of beef right after WWII. I myself had seen where a cattle rancher outside of Kingman AZ used cut-down B-17 and B-24 fuel cells removed from scrapped planes to water cattle, and I bet some bright scientist could determine that said letter writer's granny or grampy might have had a hamburger in 1948 that came from this very area, explaining the mental retardation passed generationally and mass hysteria over potential for contamination. Hay-suez Ke-rist. What a friggin' individual of questionable judgement.

Neat story - thanks for sharing - and dumb-arse comments from John Q. public nonewithstanding. Geez. Now way in heck you'd ever be able to propose re-use of surplus materiel with today's generation...

Should I post the neat little article as written in a 1948 issue of Popular Mechanics showing how to make a sport diving breathing system out of old bomber oxygen bottles and an airplane breathing regulator, or need I fear reprocussions from some dip-sh-X-t trial lawyer for reprinting something from the public domain?

Just curious...

I'm surprised that nobody even considered that the tank could have been brand new and never held fuel to begin with?

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All right, Mister Dorfmann, start pullin'!
Pilot: "Flap switch works hard in down position."
Mechanic: "Flap switch checked OK. Pilot needs more P.T." - Flight report, TB-17G 42-102875 (Hobbs AAF)

SORRY, WHAT DID YOU SAY? I can't hear you over the bleating of all the ignorant sheep that seem to have taken over this country..........just continue to nod and don't ask any questions requiring independant thought

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Don't make me go get my flying monkeys-

My girlfriends family have a floating pontoon that rests on 2 F86 sabre droptanks as floats

I think the article is just great to show how different of a mind set we have today......no more no less.

Is what we have today better or worst In some respect....it just again mostly different. I will not even try justifying left or right...... or for that matter attempt putting s weight of people mentality through the ages or their acts in general.

My humble 2 cents opinion is this is as interesting & as relevent to warbirds as the article we saw not long ago on the re-use of B-29 tire for tractors. Just a great catch.



I think we all have Chris, but since the article does not mention it....it does make for a bit better sensationalism ( spelling ? )

Probably also the reason why they are charging museums $40mil to clean up each Space Shuttle for display. Sure there are toxic things in those ships, but $40mil toxic?

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F-84F Simulator Project
www.f-84f.org