Word: bonde
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Crew-cut and trim at 54, Air Force Lieut. General Robert M. Bond had drawn the kind of duty that many aging fighter pilots would envy. As vice commander of the Air Force Systems Command, he regularly jetted away from his desk job at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland to test-pilot experimental aircraft, some of them secret, adding steadily to the more than 5,000 hours of flight experience he had accumulated over 33 years. Friends expected Bond to announce his retirement this year. But on April 26 tragedy struck: an aircraft Bond was flying over the sprawling...
Last week the circumstances surrounding Bond's last flight grew more and more mysterious. The Air Force refused to identify the plane he was piloting, except to call it "an Air Force specially modified test aircraft." At first, speculation centered on a group of aircraft under development at Nellis that use the new and highly classified Stealth technology, an array of design innovations supposedly capable of making aircraft virtually invisible to enemy radar. Then came an even more intriguing, though also unconfirmed, report: Bond was actually flying a Soviet-built MiG-23 Flogger, the primary fighter craft...
...fighters to give American pilots training in Soviet air-battle techniques. Publicly, the Air Force acknowledges only that four "aggressor squadrons" of U.S.-made F-5Es are used to mimic MiGs. A spokesman at Nellis said no such "red flag" training exercises were in progress on the day Bond crashed...
...streets initially were empty, but when the motorcade turned into North Bond, a crowd of 400 people came into view several blocks ahead. Many who had made the mistake of thinking Jackson would keep his schedule had turned out early and been waiting four or even seven hours to greet their hero, but their spirits had not been dimmed. When a navy blue Chrysler New Yorker pulled to a halt and the candidate leaped out, the crowd surged over wooden police barricades chanting, "Win, Jesse, win!" Jackson, smiling broadly, strode into the throng, surrounded by apprehensive Secret Service agents...
...Journal is deliberately dull to look at, especially on its tombstone-like front page. Photographs appear only in advertisements, and illustration is limited to a handful of line drawings. The emphasis on copy allows the paper to cram its coverage and extensive stock and bond tables into about 22 pages of news space. Says Kann: "We recognize that the paper should not grow too big-it would lose its convenience and utility...