Word: birdmen
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Died. Brigadier General Frank Purdy Lahm, 85, one of the U.S. Army's earliest birdmen, a West Pointer who took lessons from Wilbur Wright and in 1909 soloed the Army's first plane, went on to train many top airmen as first commander of the Air Corps' pioneer flying school at Randolph Field, Texas-over which his ashes will be scattered from a plane; of a stroke; in Sandusky, Ohio...
This spring the fight is hotter than ever. With Silent Spring as their gospel, birdmen are on the march all over the Middle West. But the tree people have rallied too. In spite of spraying, they point out, there seem to be plenty of birds around; and what are birds compared to elms? "In Kansas in August," said one elm lover, "you have to run from tree to tree to keep from getting sunburned to death...
...Force cut off $90 million worth of Northrop orders. By the time Tom Jones came on the scene, Northrop had only two projects of size, both precariously experimental: the F89 fighter and the winged Snark, the nation's first intercontinental missile, which was exploding so regularly that birdmen joked wryly about "the Snark-infested waters off Cape Canaveral." Time and again, Air Force procurement officers threatened to cancel the Snark if it failed just once more, and to scrap the F89 if it turned up just one more...
...Rear Admiral William F. Raborn, officer in charge of Polaris: "He is the only man in the Navy who has a blank check. All he has to do is say 'I want,' and he gets." If the faults can be whipped, even the most loyal Air Force birdmen admit that their lox systems will probably give way to solid fuels in the next round of missile development...
...expansive ground floor of Paris' Musée National d'Art Moderne looked like a specter-haunted landscape from Mars. Birdmen, ten inches tall, made up of a human thorax, bare-boned ribs and a spinal column topped by oversized beak and reptilian eyes, stared back at the spectators. A human-size Praying Mantis in female form crouched ready to spring; a Shepherd with half-decayed body tottering on three spindle legs looked more like an abandoned sheep carcass than a human figure. The reason for this nightmare in Paris last week: 82 pieces finished in the last...