whole nine yards

[Evan Morris]

At 08:42 PM 6/28/00, Herb Stahlke wrote:

>The story I read, the one I passed on to Arnold Zwicky, was essentially
>the same, but set in Britain.  Has anyone ever checked the length of those
>ammo belts?  Do we have here the common sorts of variants on a myth?  I
>look forward to reading your paper.


P-51 Mustangs (there were six variants made, the most prevalent being the
P-51D) had either 4 or 6 .50 caliber guns, and carried a total of,
respectively, 1260 or 1880 rounds.  Figuring maybe ten rounds per foot (the
.50 cal. shells I've seen are pretty big), that's 126/4 = ~31 feet (or
188/6 = ~31 feet) per gun.  In the ballpark, in other words.

But personally I doubt that explanation, if for no other reason than the
time gap.