First day's work for the students of the "Centre de Formation des Apprentis de l’Industrie"
Lots of excitement this afternoon at the Carpiquet facilities where over 60 students fom the Caen CFAEI school showed up to visit the old plane they'll have to work upon in the upcoming weeks. Ten of them along with three instructors have already begun making patches the american way, using cut offs aluminium plates.
On a given bullet mark (there are dozens of them on the fuselage), one must firsthand remove a circular piece the size of the patch. The patch is then screwed on a square plate to be installed from the inside of the plane in such a way that the patch perfectly fits the impact and the circular piece previously removed. The square plate is then drilled and screwed into the fuselage. In so doing, the patch does not overlap nor depress the smoothness of the fuselage once the final painting job has been applied. Only the bolts seem to slightly stick out. On this very first afternoon, a dozen patches have already been screwed on. Other students got on with the removal of wing tips while others made preparations to set up Rebecca antennas.
All these students showed great enthusiasm in their work and tried very hard to comply with the 1944 work standarts. What a thrill to watch them run around the old bird. Good old SNAFU must be quite surprised to receive so much attention after two decades of total rejection. As far as the CFAI students, what else can be said; they too are from now on part of SNAFU's legend.