Word: 39s
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Casablanca, several P-39s arrived with a vital fitting broken. Spare fittings, of the same material, were not to be trusted in combat. An A.S.C. officer scrounged some asbestos from the French for a crucible, made an oven from adobe brick, heated it with acetylene torches. With aluminum from salvaged German propellers and a little copper he made new hinges, put the planes into combat in three days. When fabric parts needed repairs, the same officer borrowed the only available sewing machine in town from a French dressmaker. It had no needles. He made some out of bicycle spokes...
...dogfight the Japs. You cannot do it with the planes you've got," said Buzz Wagner. But one day in May, when Wagner himself went along to initiate one of his green squadrons, some stragglers tried to dogfight Zeros with P-39s. Four of them were shot down. Four Japs were also shot down, three of them by Buzz Wagner, who knew better than to dogfight except when he had to. Buzz was bucking orders that day-a Jap bullet had splintered windshield glass into his left eye in the Philippines-but the chance to kill more Japs...
...American pilots in this Spitfire squadron were brought up on Curtiss P-40s and Bell Airacobra P-39s. They said they preferred the Airacobras to the P-40s, but they found the British Spitfires infinitely preferable in nearly every way to the Airacobras...
...Corps regulations demanded that crated wings of P-40s and P-39s be placed on end. Estimates along the waterfront were that 30 to 60% more planes could have been carried across the Pacific if wing crates could have been laid flat or on their sides...
...half an hour before lunchtime when the first siren screamed; about noon practically the whole Mitchel air fleet was aloft: medium Martin bombers (with machine guns, but no bombs in their racks), mean-looking, olive-drab P-39s...