Word: breech
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...auto annals, there are few switches of allegiance that even come close to equaling Knudsen's. In 1946, Ernest Breech, a former G.M. vice president, left the presidency of Bendix Aviation -then partially controlled by G.M.-to become Ford's executive vice president. And then there was Knudsen's father, William S. ("Big Bill") Knudsen, who switched in the opposite direction, from Ford to G.M.-but that was early in his career...
...birthday truce itself proved a bloody affair, honored by the Communists in the gun breech from almost its first moments. Saigon, to be sure, blossomed with festooned streets and parades of floats escorted by buzzing swarms of teen-agers on motorbikes. But on the battlefields, bullets and mortars pounded in 73 enemy violations of the truce period recorded by Saigon. Some 30 of them were judged "significant," including a long firefight in southern Quang Ngai province in which 45 North Vietnamese and eight American soldiers died early on the birthday of Buddha, who enjoined reverence for life...
Whenever a dull moment threatens, Hill rummages around in Michener's bottomless bag of epic tricks and comes up with windstorms, conflagrations, eruptions, street fights, breech births, shark attacks, luaus, lava-lavas and assorted shouts and muumuus-not to mention a large number of young wahines who appear in a state of nature and fill the giant screen with impressive outcroppings of what Hawaiians call papaia. What's more, the principals play with aplomb. Julie Andrews brings both sensuality and sensibility to a role that might easily have wallowed in sweetness and light. And Von Sydow is superb...
...told him what a mess TWA was, except for the flying operations," Breech recalls. Tillinghast insisted that Breech become TWA's chairman (he still is). For himself, he arranged a contract that would continue his in come even if Hughes regained control of TWA and-as was fully to be expected-fired both of them. "It was kind of a dirty trick," Breech says today, "taking him out of Bendix where he was doing well and putting him in a business he knew nothing about...
...Hughes made his worst mistake. Chivvying Tillinghast about his Boeing purchases-he argued that other planes should have been bought-Hughes threatened to sue the airline for ignoring his wishes. Instead, backed by Breech and his star-filled board, Tillinghast sued Hughes for $145 million treble damages on antitrust charges. While he had control, the suit charged, Hughes had forced the company to buy planes that did not fit its needs, notably 20 Super-Constellations. TWA wrote the Connies off its books as a $38 million loss after flying them only a year and a half. Hughes countersued, but when...