In effetti sono tutte chicche, però, a mio modesto parere, quella più interessante è il "Conestoga", un velivolo che mi era del tutto sconosciuto.
Infatti, in quell'interessantissimo e documentato volume che è "United States Military Aircraft since 1909", edito nel 1963 da Putnam ...
... gli viene dedicata soltanto una riga di testo a pagina 571 nell'elenco riservato agli aerei da trasporto:
"C-93 BUDD All-steel Conestoga project. 600 cancelled"Ne ho comunque raccolto quà e là qualche altra immagine:
Cita:
The First Tiger Aircraft, The Budd Conestoga
Prescott knew that after the war there would likely be many new airlines starting up and competition would be fierce. His best chance for success was to get organized while the war was still in progress. The big problem was that no airplanes were available anywhere in the world. It was this inside knowledge that the entire production run of the Budd Conestoga had been canceled and the airplanes rejected by the Navy that made the airline possible. They felt that if anyone could make the Budds into reliable airplane, they could. If not, the Budds could be replaced when DC-3s became available.The Budds new home in Long Beach California
The new company bought the entire fleet of twelve Budd Conestoga's and immediately sold four of them for a price, which paid for them all. The remaining eight Budds departed Augusta, Georgia, for Long Beach California. Seven Arrived. The other one crashed in Fort Worth, Texas, and was sold on the spot for $500. It remained in service for many years...as a hamburger stand
Furniture was also one of the early shipment experiments
During the New Year celebration also at the Prescott's came word of this Budd which had belly landed in a golf course in Bluefield Virginia during a blizzard 
"
During World War II, 21,887 women from the Commonwealth served in the armed forces, and another 843 in the Coast Guard. Here, Sally Siebert from the Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVE) and Winifred Thompson from the Women's Army Corps (WAC) pose for a publicity photo with a Budd RB-1 Conestoga cargo aircraft, the first large size cargo plane mass-produced primarily of stainless steel. Opened in 1943, the Budd Airfield was located north of Budd Company's northeast Philadelphia plant."
Un aereo che lasciava a desiderare in quanto a "glamour", ma molto particolare e sul quale erano state applicate tecnologie assai avanzate per l'epoca.
Il meteo su Washington
