> In 1941, the first "Victory Vertical" was dropped by parachute, complete with tuning equipment and instructions.
Above is from the posted article, in a less fluffy piece [0] someone else posted in these comments their transport crates included: "a set of tuning tools, instructions, spare parts, and sheet music consisting of light classics, Protestant hymns, sing-along tunes, and boogie-woogie numbers"
Basically they didn't try, they provided the tools to tune and repair them and counted on the fact that there'd be a number of mechanically minded people where ever these went (for repairing more normal army equipment) that could do a passable job of keeping them working.
Heck, with a drafted army there's a decent chance on bigger bases for there to be someone who's actually who's worked on piano's in some capacity before.
I wondered the same thing, but the article mentions "[...] dropped by parachute, complete with tuning equipment and instructions", so I'm guessing the soldiers had to tune it themselves using that tuning equipment (and these instructions were probably "how to tune this piano").
Above is from the posted article, in a less fluffy piece [0] someone else posted in these comments their transport crates included: "a set of tuning tools, instructions, spare parts, and sheet music consisting of light classics, Protestant hymns, sing-along tunes, and boogie-woogie numbers"
Basically they didn't try, they provided the tools to tune and repair them and counted on the fact that there'd be a number of mechanically minded people where ever these went (for repairing more normal army equipment) that could do a passable job of keeping them working.
Heck, with a drafted army there's a decent chance on bigger bases for there to be someone who's actually who's worked on piano's in some capacity before.
[0] https://www.steinway.com/news/features/victory-verticals