Warbird Information Exchange

BDK,

Yes this happened, and was quite the study. Believe it or not I discovered this in college when an old out of use textbook on Aircraft Structures fell into my hands....And an entire chapter was filled with the data on the experiment!~ The story is kinda neat.

Knowing the hours and service histories of the aircraft, the wings were tested to see if there was a link in fatigue resistance versus prior damage or hours flown. I believe the results were inconclusive. Interestingly I heard that some (2 or 3) of these broken mainplanes were stored and forgotten and became parts of some of the "1980's" build Mustangs at one point.