Warbird Information Exchange

In the course of reading up on the 8th Air Force, I read a lot about the damage B-17's would incur from flak. I was wondering how these repair were made (seemingly quickly) to get a lot of these planes back in the air. Were entire sections re-skinned? They must have had massive sheet metal and structural repair shops to do this kind of work. Was this the purpose of the T1 hangars at most of these airfields? Some of these planes had dozens of flak holes in them after a mission. Just curious about the maintenance aspect of the war.

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Since I wasn't there, I can't give a 100% verifiable answer, but...
We have all seen photos of bombers with replacement large sections either new or from salvaged aircraft....outboard wing panels, vertical fins, and of course the half NMF - half OD B-17 fuselage.


For smaller holes they did simple patches riveted in place.
I saw a restored (rebuilt) P-51 which was displayed along with a section of its original skin. On it there was a period combat battle damage patch about 2" x 4".
If a non pressurized aircraft was peppered with flak shrapnel, small patches would certainly be used to get a plane back in action.

The C-123 at the NMUSAF has many as a result of Vietnam combat.
In my own USAF career, in the 1980s USAFE was heavily into wartime training so most bases had a ABDR -Aircraft Battle Damage Repair ship...a retired aircraft which maintenance people could poke holes in (sometimes with an axe) as a training tool. My base had an ex-NY ANG F-101B. I picked up a 1x2"/section of skin off it and have it displayed in my den... They would patch them up during a wartime emergency with spare alloy. And I recall seeing one section patched with a flattened piece of a Coke can. Really.
I have no idea if it was a joke or whether that was an approved wartime expediency fit. Seems a bit thin to me since normal large aircraft pieces I've seen have skin the thickness of a dime. (Measured against the 737 cross section in the BWI terminal).

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