Ohio War Stories: Share Your Memories

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June 24th, 2008

Edward S. Sanders worked during the war for Cleveland Pneumatic in Cleveland, Ohio and tried to join the Navy after the start of WWII. He got as far as Columbus, Ohio on the train before he was intercepted and sent home as “essential to the war effort.”

My father was never happy about his work in a shop setting, either as a tool designer or an assistant shop forman. But one of the things he was most proud of was his work in helping to design a positive locking mechanism for landing gear for carrier aircraft. He told me that the hard carrier landings often collapsed the landing gear and that Cleveland Pneumatic, which made landing gear and landing gear components, gave him the job to improve the system they currently had.

He showed me on a simple tool, how he adapted a positive locking mechanism so that when the gear went down, it snapped into a positive lock that wouldn’t retract no matter how hard the landing. It was a simple an elegant solution that earned patents for Cleveland Pneumatic that had his name as designer. Keep reading…