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>> Immediately getting off a bus at Pyote,
after all, that is an Air Force base,
and it's just a desert out there,
and there was an ocean of airplanes.
Most of them B29s,
but you had B25s, B26s as well.
But the Major gave me a jeep,
gave me a buck, and said, [inaudible].
And I asked him,
well, really, why do you call Rattlesnake Air Force Base?
Why is it named that?
He says, you'll find out.
He meant it. I took the jeep and
rode around the base looking at the various setups.
All 29s were up on blocks with the bomb A doors open.
Some of them were obviously damaged.
Some of them were not.
After all, they had all flown in there.
So they weren't crippled
to the point that they weren't flyable.
My job was to pick out those Boeing had
recommended stay with those built-in
[inaudible] if you can.
I'm glad they put, if you can with it.
Picked those out
and stay away from those that
there's evidence that they had been used
for other than bombing,
say if they were used for hurricane hunters,
it'd be best to stay away from that.
The crew came in gradually.
I had suggested to Dan that they give me an engineer,
a couple of manufacturing types,
and an inspector if he can.
He did. We formed a team.
We set up a routine.
I had the clipboard.
We went out day after day making a selection.
Mostly, I went around tip to tip, nose to tail.
And a little bit of nodding my head down
to check before I stepped because
there were snakes around there.
And we had one that had very nicely,
comfortably located on a landing gear wheel.
But we selected about 130.
And I was quite happy with the selection there.
It took us about two weeks.
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