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Interesting question. We had never heard this claim before, and it sounded suspiciously like urban (or aviation) legend, but we set out to see if there was any truth to it. We tried a number of tactics to uncover some facts but had a difficult time finding reliable sources. Sadly, most of our searches turned up little more than a bunch of tasteless jokes or irrelevant material. We finally stumbled across a page from the web site of the United States Air Force Museum, which discussed the employment practices of the Air Service Command. The page said that dwarves (the word "midget"
is generally considered a derogatory term) find their size an asset when working inside the fuselages and wing sections of certain planes. This seemed to support the rumor, but we searched on, looking for confirmation. We found it in an interview with a retired employee of Bell and Lockheed. The former plant manager said that dwarves were used by both companies for "the primary installation, wiring, electrical, in tight places where an ordinary-sized person couldn't get to it." He goes on to say that little people could access and work comfortably in many areas that would make a person of average height cramped or uncomfortable. So it seems you heard the truth, though there is not a great deal of information about this practice
available on the Internet.
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