At 94, I Still Remember That Day

A near-miss storm blew through Fort Worth

by Charles S.

I went to work in Fort Worth, Texas, the Monday after Thanksgiving 1948 as a flight line mechanic. The memories that are so vivid in my mind are from May 1949.

I was a member of the second shift, and we came to work at 4:45 p.m. There was stormy weather on that day. The day shift loaded an airplane on jacks on the north side of the experimental building and north of the taxi way. The workers had airplane jacked up, and all the wheels were off the ground. We were to test the release of the landing wheel system. I was on the left side. There was the pilot and a man on each side of the landing emergency landing system when we were hit by a thunderstorm that lifted the airplane about one inch off of the jacks. If the plane had moved one inch, we would have a crashed airplane and three men hurt. A plane was never worked on in that area again!

Ft. Worth circa 1949