Vultee–

That would be a fascinating, if melancholy, diorama. Haven’t iirc seen photos of the smelting operations at Kingman (or Walnut Ridge, or wherever) in the 40s, but there certainly was TV footage of the “Argus massacre” at CFB Summerside in 1982. They did indeed use giant blades dropped from a construction crane (or in this case a “destruction crane”?) to guillotine the CP-107s into smelter-size chunks. Crude but effective… 🙁 Somewhere in cyberspace I bet there’s streaming video of that operation, which wouldn’t be any too different, hardware-wise, from the smithereening of Forts and Libs circa ’47.

(BTW, the CP-107 Argus was Canadair’s piston-engined ASW/sea patrol cousin of the Bristol Britannia. The scrapping of all but five of the fleet made the TV news because there was controversy over a civilian company’s blocked plan to buy the CP-107s and convert them for firefighting.)

S.