IMO the Google WWII P-38 explanation is mostly right, but wrong in detail.
The idea that the “balls” are the knobs on 1930s-1940s aircraft engine controls is fine. And that the “wall” is the aircraft’s firewall is fine. So the meaning is strictly “push the knobs fully forward” which amounts to literally “apply maximum power” and figuratively / generally as “Go all out!”
But aircraft engines of that era have 3 control knobs per engine. And full power is always two and sometimes all three knobs full forward. So there’s no need for the airplane to be multi-engine for it to be “balls (plural) to the wall”.
Further, firewalls are the structure on the aft side of an engine. So named because they’re designed with no penetrations that can conduct fire and are meant to isolate any engine fire to that side, so the fire doesn’t promptly propagate to the rest of the airplane.
In a typical single engine prop plane of that era with the typical nose-mounted engine, the firewall was what separated the aft end of the engine compartment from the front end of the cockpit. In a twin like the P-38, the firewalls are out on the engine/tail booms, not in front of the cockpit. Meaning of all the planes likely to have originated the saying, it’s far more likely to have been a single with the firewall a couple feet dead ahead of the knobs, not a twin or multi with the firewalls many feet off to the side and maybe many feet aft of the cockpit.
Folks now certainly use “balls to the wall” on modern airplanes, be they jet or prop, single or multi, and on vintage airplanes that predate the P-38 by a decade. I can’t prove it did or didn’t originate with the P-38, but ISTM / IMO that article writer didn’t know enough to discount the P-38 theory & went with it for lack of any other ideas. To their credit, they did say “may” have originated with the P-38.
Of course the spreading and staying power of the phrase has a lot to do with testicles. There are a vast array of testicle-related idioms that all amount to be aggressive, go all out, be a man, stop at nothing, etc. “Balls forward!” sure fits that theme.
Maybe. The only structural part of a basic 1930s airplane whose proper term includes “wall” is the “firewall”. Other surfaces are bulkheads, skins, panels, etc. Lotta words, but not “wall”.
Could somebody refer to a bulkhead as a wall? Sure.
Also seems to have nautical applications, at least if “Down Periscope” had any degree of accuracy. Granted, that was a lightweight popcorn comedy set on a US Navy submarine, but it’s the only place I recall hearing that phrase prior to this conversation.
Oh believe me I read every reply or comment in any thread I ever start on a message board.
This one question about the “Display Until” magazine date had many little details and attributes, despite the question being so trivial and unimportant, and ultimately we didn’t quite answer every little attribute of the topic (like the aforementioned “how long past the Display Until date is too long for the business to get a refund?”, that kind of thing). But we covered the whole topic pretty well
Ellipsis edit mine above.
But things like for example murder or violent rape- they happen almost as much as the ~125 daily U.S. traffic deaths, and yet often still get news attention (at least a little bit) because of their scandalous nature. Store robberies often get mentions, too. Some have described “the news” as “old things happening to new people.”
Stolen cars are a big deal, automobiles are the most valuable and major thing the average thief/criminal can steal, and while not usually as scandalous or attention-grabbing as murders or violent rapes, they rank up there with those things, and if store robberies and fatal house fires get their mentions at times then at least once in a while you’d think stolen cars would get some attention also.
When I was a teenager, there was a national Sunday newspaper which reported salacious items on the back pages where others had the sports.
Typically they would send a reporter to investigate a brothel where he, having thoroughly investigated the goings-on, would “make his excuses and leave”. There were also many reports of scout leaders interfering with boys, men exposing themselves in parks, and cottaging in public toilets. These offences were not treated with anything like the seriousness that they are today. If they ended up in court, they would most likely have to pay a modest fine, at least for a first offence.
Of course not, and it’s not nearly as bad as getting seriously injured or killed in a car accident either; but grand theft auto is a very very major and serious thing, especially if it happens to someone who’s middle-to-lower class and possibly doesn’t have theft insurance or the like.
I’ve seen issues of Washington Post that contained a few special pages listing every significant crime / police call that happened in D.C. over the course of several weeks / one month or so
But the entries were pretty one-line text for each basically, not many details or headlines; not a story
Here’s another topic: Google Street View has that tab that says “See Other Dates” in which you can access older images of the location you’re viewing, but the oldest images on Street View are basically 2007 or so. I’ve heard there’s something like Google Street View only you can also access old photos of the places you’re looking at, so for example if I’m looking at the corner of 44th and Broadway in Times Square on a Google Street View type thing I can also click on something to see photos of the address location that are possibly from the 90s, 70s, 50s, etc.?
I think Google Earth has very old satellite imagery, maybe back to the 80s, but not old street view. NB: That’s Google EARTH, a standalone installable app, and not the in-browser Google Maps.
I know what Google Earth is of course, but I heard someone started a database of '90s, 80s, 70s, 60s or older photos and stuff that you can navigate kinda like a Street View type thing?
I was in the basement of a Just Salad store the other day, and I saw a door that said “7 Day Vault” on it; Googling it didn’t answer the question of what that is..?..
In the movie Grease why is the drag racing strip known as “Thunder Road”? I get that it’s where they drag race, and I know in RL it’s the LA River Culvert, but is “Thunder Road” taken from any specific movie or just a general term?
Its popularity as a name for places where informal car races are held originates from a 1958 Robert Mitchum film about moonshine runners. The film gets its title from the nickname of a notorious stretch of road in Tennessee used by those runners in their souped up cars. I’m not sure anybody knows for certain how that route got it’s name but a good guess is the sound of those powerful engines or perhaps a play on “bottled lightening” as a name for moonshine.
So, outside of Tennessee it was never, before the Mitchum movie, a broadly-used term by American drag racers/teens? (and I’m guessing even after the Mitchum movie it wasn’t a widespread nickname for drag-racing areas?)
You must have heard the ubiquitous quote “if it bleeds, it leads” yes? Stolen cars are not sexy, scandalous or gruesome. They are a boring property crime and are waaaaaaaay below the seriousness of any of those other crimes you mentioned. It’s honestly ludicrous that you would say a stolen car is “up there with” murder and rape.
I am also guessing that many of those stolen cars are false reports of family members/friends taking cars without asking, not generally what the public thinks of when hearing about a car being stolen.
Just when I thought I was out, a call for cites pulls me back in.
I went to a newspaper database and couldn’t find any earlier mentions of “thunder road” and illegal whiskey haulers under any keyword.
But starting in 1940, articles about the Central States Racing Association called tracks the “thunder road”.
And in 1952, William Campbell Gault wrote what we today would call a YA book titled Thunder Road, about the Indy 500. Gault was a big name and every library carried his books. I know I read them a decade later.
Working historians also haven’t found evidence for the name, but anecdotal memories exist. They agree that in 1953 or 1954 a chase occurred and a crash and maybe a death. Nashville was still moonshine territory.
The problem is not that they sound like stories and vary with the facts, but that none of them use the term “thunder road.” Mitchum may have made it up, or James Agee, the writer he got the story from thought it was a catchy term, or either could have been aware of the earlier racing uses. Nobody knows, and the dead aren’t talking.
