Buffalo crash

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• The engine of a newly built P-40 catches fire on its first test flight, causing the pilot to bail out. The aircraft crashes through the roof of the Curtiss-Wright aircraft factory in Buffalo, New York. Of several thousand evening shift workers, 12 are killed and 35 injured. The workers very quickly put out the blaze.

 

- Later in the war, several CW executives will be fired after a Truman Committee investigation turns up proof that executives falsified tests and knowingly sold defective engines to the military. One USAAF general who knew about it will go to prison.

 

The Buffalo plant in early 1943 building P-40s and C-46s as well as license built P-47s"

[CUJO_1970]

21 Pilots.

[cardboard_killer]

Actually, it wasn't a general.

 

"Lieutenant Colonel Frank C. Greulich, Major William Bruckmann, and Major Walter A. Ryan were all relieved and convicted of neglect of duty.

 

Arthur Miller's play All My Sons is based on these incidents.  It will receive acclaim on Broadway, have a 1948 film made starring Edward G. Robinson and Burt Lancaster, and get Miller hauled in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee for "questioning the American dream".