Word: airacudas
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Bell Aircraft's first break came in 1937 when it proudly announced the Airacuda, a freakish-looking, poor-flying bomber-fighter which got a burst of publicity but little else. Then came Bell's first success: the Airacobra, a flashy, 400-m.p.h., single-place fighter which has a cannon in its nose and climbs like an express elevator...
...Curtiss-Wright, $395,000,000 for Douglas, $373,000,000 for United Air craft, $218,000,000 for Lockheed. Backlogs of the smaller fry (called "marginal producers" less than a year ago) were scarcely less dizzying. Sample: 46-year-old Lawrence Doane Bell's Bell Aircraft (Airacuda, Airacobra), whose books bulge with $60,000,000 in orders, up from $7,500,000 last year...
When "Rube" Fleet moved his company to San Diego in 1935, Larry Bell leased the old plant, raised $400,000 by stock sales in Buffalo and became president of Bell Aircraft Corp., with Robert J. Woods as his boss designer. While Woods was turning out the two-engined Airacuda, Bell Aircraft was making ends meet by subcontracting for other manufacturers; but by the time the Air Corps had bought 13 Airacudas, Larry Bell could see the Airacobra and a real manufacturing future ahead. Last week on Bell's books were Air Corps orders for 93 Airacobras, and its backlog...