Flora Tye couldn’t begin to count all the rivets she riveted during her three years with Douglas Aircraft during World War II.

She just knew she was fast.

“I could shoot them so fast, my partner would holler and say, ‘slow down,’” she recalled.

Tye, then Flora Hilton, was 18 when she left her farm in Porum to help assemble B-24 Liberator planes from 1942 to 1945.

The B-29/B-24 Squadron of the Commemorative Air Force will honor Tye’s war work today during a visit to the McAlester Regional Airport.

The squadron will fly a B-24 Liberator into the airport between 8:30 and 9 a.m. today and will have a ceremony honoring pilots and crews who served on the airplanes, as well as those who built them.

Among the others to be honored is McAlester resident Duane Jordan, who flew the B-24 on a bombing mission to take out part of the Japanese Burma Railroad during World War II, according to a story in the McAlester News-Capital.

The story said Tye worked with Douglas Aircraft in Tulsa during the war, where her duties included riveting wing sections of the B-24.

The Liberator gained a distinguished war record with missions in the Pacific, Middle East, Africa and Europe. The Aviation-History.com Web site said Liberators are recorded as having dropped more than 630,000 tons of bombs and gunning several thousand enemy aircraft. It had six 50-caliber guns.

Toni Stevenson, tour director for the B-24 Liberator, said she feels especially glad to honor Tye.

“Every time we have the opportunity to met a veteran flier or a person who built the aircraft, someone from that generation, it’s an honor,” Stevenson said. “The aircraft wouldn’t be flying if it weren’t for the people who built them.”

Stevenson said the aircraft workers, or riveters, are an especially hard group to find or reach out to. She said veterans could be found through their squadron groups, but the plants didn’t keep such records.

Tye, 85, said she doesn’t know if anyone she worked with at Douglas Aircraft is still around.

“I don’t even remember the name of the man I worked with,” she said.

Tye recalled moving up to Tulsa shortly after graduating from Porum High School in 1946. She went to live with her aunt, a beauty operator.