Flying Tigers

While I was at my Mom's we watched some old John Wayne movies. One of them was The Flying Tigers. It is about a group of volunteer pilots in China before WWII. It was during this movie that my Mom told me she worked on the landing gear of the P-40, the plane that they used. I knew that she had worked at Curtiss-Wright in Buffalo, NY during the war and met my Dad there but never knew what she worked on.

There is a Glenn Curtiss Museum in Hammondsport, NY. It is very close to my friends house so we went over there. They have a 3/4 size P-4o in the museum. A man in the museum told me that someone actually made the plane and flew it, so it is a working plane.

Glenn Curtiss was a mechanical genius. He made motorcycles and joined an Aerial Experiment Association founded by Alexander Graham Bell. A lot of his airplanes are in this museum and they are restoring some of them. He made some boats and did testing on Keuka Lake. Here is a link to the museum website. http://www.glennhcurtissmuseum.org/ I hope you will check it out because it is a fascinating place. Also a link about the Flying Tigers http://www.flyingtigersavg.com/tiger1.htm