My mother installed landing lights in the P-40, my dad served in the CBI theater of war
Little known fact: between Curtiss and Bell, Buffalo was something like the tenth largest center of combat aircraft production in the world during World War 2. (It would have been larger, except Consolidated moved to Southern California in the mid-30s.) And most of the aircraft produced went to the Soviet Union.
And Curtiss made some of the worst planes of the war, as well. The SB3C Helldiver killed the company (the Navy refused to buy any planes from Curtiss post-war, because of that fiasco). The SO3C Seamew was so stupid-awful it was funny.