The following story taken from "The Smithsonian Book of Flight"...
"The Jug in New Guinea
Edwards Park
I work standing up. When people ask why, I murmur something about my back. The real reason goes back to December 1943, when the Pentagon rediscovered our long-forgotten fighter squadron in New Guinea's Ramu Valley, and gave us P-47s.
We had been flying P-39s, dicey by nature, and growing more so with advancing age. So my first memories of the Thunderbolt are tinged by obvious contrasts: it seemed huge to pilots used to the tiny '39. "Hey, we got Cadillacs," one colleague remarked-- and searched the spacious cockpit for a golve compartment.
Seated in elbow-spreading comfort, we checked out. Takeoff? You checked mags, set trim tabs, cracked flaps, locked the tailwheel, poured on the coal and the plane did the rest. It obeyed every whim--climbing steeply, abruptly winging over and diving-- without a sign of p-39 hysteria. On landing it simply sagged impassively, straight onto the runway. Unused to 16,000 pounds of airplane, we sometimes climped it on a little hard. "I just dropped eight tons on the Nadzab strip," a fellow pilot once ruefully reported, "And I was in it!"
No matter. The P-47 was built like a boulder. I ince saw one touch water on a low pass, and fly home with a foot of each propellor blade curled neatly back. Another colided with a P-38. Both got back, the Lightning with half a wing, the Jug with scratched paint. It flew another mission that afternoon.
Those missions were far longer than any we had ever flown before: four, even five hours. But these missions weren't long enough for the Southwest Pacific. So Charles Lindbergh, representing Pratt & Whitney, briefed Fifth Air Force Thunderbolt pilots on long-range flying. I remember gathering in a lantern-lit mess test one evening, and being introduced en masse to the god-figure of all pilots everywhere, tall, slender, familiar. Someone whispered that he had shot down an enemy plane that afternoon. Of course, he never mentioned it. In his soft Midwestern voice, he told us to try a high throttle setting and only 1,400 RPMs. Our propellors would grind along, taking great bites of air.
We stirred uneasily at the heresy, and Lindbergh read our thoughts. "These are military engines, built to take punishment," he said, "so punish them." The he added that if we felt uncomfortable about flying this way, we shouldn't do it: " You're the captains of your own ships. You must make the decisions. After all, you know more about flying your planes than I do."
At that we burst out laughing. And we began flying eight-hour missions. We'd return so numb we'd taxi standing up, feet on the rudder bars, massaging our buttocks with both hands.
Oh, yes. The P-47 was wonderfully forgiving and brutally tough. And thanks to it, and Charles Lindbergh, I now work standing up."
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Flakbait
Delta 6's Flight School"For yay did the sky darken, and split open and spew forth fire, and
through the smoke rode the Four Wurgers of the Apocalypse.
And on their canopies was tattooed the number of the Beast, and the
number was 190." Jedi, Verse Five, Capter Two, The Book of Dweeb 
