I’m something an aviation buff, which isn’t surprising considering my career path as enlisted Naval Aircrew, and now a Naval Aviation mission systems tester. I especially admire WWII birds, and there’s one that doesn’t get the limelight it deserves- the Republic P-47 Thunderbolt. It was big, heavy and carried metric assload of smack-you-in-the-face goodness. Affectionately called “The Jug” by its pilots and maintainers, it was first employed as a bomber escort and in fighter sweeps. Unfortunately, it lacked the legs for the long-range bomber missions; those duties would eventually be performed the sleek P-51 Mustang. Where the Jug shined was in the ground attack arena. It’s eight Ma Deuce .50 caliber guns and up to 2500 pounds of external bombs and rockets capacity were used to great effect; it destroyed rail cars and locomotives, armored vehicles, trucks and barges. Its legacy lives on in the A-10, officially named the Thunderbolt II. Shift gears.
Rosie the riveter is an American cultural icon, representing women who, in the dark times of WWII, stood up, rolled up their sleeves, and took the places of the men called off to war. The jobs they took in the shipyards, factories, and assembly lines across the US provided the US military and the allies with the materials to crush the Thousand Year Reich and the Greater Co-Prosperity Sphere. They were good at their jobs and knew it, and that pride shined through. Which brings us around to this:
WWII-era plane mystery: Who are Eva and Edith?
By Andreas Preuss, CNN
(CNN)Their identities may have been lost in time, but now the search is on for two women who scrawled their names inside the wing of a WWII-era fighter plane.
A grease pencil signature says “Eva & Edith” and was found on a P-47 Thunderbolt by AirCorps Aviation, who is restoring the plane.
The specific plane, model P-47 D-23RA, that had the Eva & Edith signatures was completed in 1944 at Republic Aviation’s Evansville, Indiana plant, according to the AirCorps website.
But the Eva & Edith wing panel was actually built at the Curtiss-Wright Company in Buffalo, New York. Due to high demand, some plane components had to be built in other factories, Sara Zimmerman with AirCorps told CNN.
Thousands of women worked at the plants as part of the US war effort. Their work was immortalized as the iconic “Rosie the Riveter.”
“A lot of times, you hear about the folks that flew them, the Aces and the missions they took part in. But, often, the folks that went to work here at the home front kind of get a little overlooked, military historian Kenneth Grant told CNN affiliate WFIE.
More than 6,000 Thunderbolts were manufactured at the Evansville factory during the war. The plane, also known as T-Bolt or “Jug” — short for Juggernaut, was a large and fast fighter/bomber that saw combat in Europe and the Pacific.
Notes, signatures and measurements were often written on the inner surfaces of aircraft during the manufacturing process — sometimes for convenience and sometimes for posterity, AirCorps said.
AirCorps is asking anyone with information about Eva and Edith to contact them.
“Could these two ladies have possibly fathomed that 72 years after becoming part of the ‘army at home’ their signatures inside a P-47 would still exist as evidence of their contributions?” the website mused.