02-17-2012, 08:46 PM
i aggree with the comments about aluminum, in that period most aluminum was being sand cast the alloys were simply not available at the time to make the high strength forgings. At the time aluminum was just highly refined dirt,(buaxite ore) to make it strong it had to be thick. Remember we were using a slide rule for caculations and adding a fudge factor in essence overbuilding everything. Now we have finiate element software that allows us to precisly determine a safety factor.