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October 1942. "American mothers and sisters, like these women at the Douglas Aircraft Company plant in Long Beach, California, give important help in producing dependable planes for their men at the front." View full size. 4x5 Kodachrome transparency by Alfred Palmer for the Office of War Information.
The Kodachromes with the most comments feature women.
Mother is getting kinda frumpy, but sister is attractive.
Could those strips be part of a cradle underneath the fuselage? Hard to tell because of the shadows, but they look like they may have some sort of padding between them and the plane.
While you may be right about it being a B-17, I am not certain it is. This cannot be the area where the B-17 wing carries through the fuselage, because it was low-wing and hugely thick. This is most likely the horizontal stabilizer area in the back of the plane. If you look at the original in the top left you can see a structure which is probably the leading edge of the tail fin and above their heads are support structures for the vertical tail. What has me confused are those reinforcement strips below them.
why type of airplane they're working on? I've found sources saying Douglas built B-17s at the Long Beach factory. This seems to be one. The section they're working in could be where the wings meet the fuselage.
[The B-17F "Flying Fortress" bomber, A-20 "Havoc" assault bomber and C-47 transport were among the aircraft made at the Long Beach plant. - Dave]
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