Word: buzzed
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Killer. They sent Buzz to Australia to fetch more planes that were not there. By the time some P-40s arrived Java was being invaded. Charles ("Bud") Sprague and Buzz were told to flip a coin to decide who would go to Java, who would remain in Australia to teach some green pilots just arrived from the U.S. Sprague went to Java, where he was killed. "You won the toss?" a newsman asked Buzz. "No, I lost. Bud Sprague was my friend," said Buzz, his blue-green eyes ablaze...
...Buzz saw his teaching job, it was a question of preparing youngsters who had never seen death for the task of killing. With little groups of men younger than himself the 25-year-old lieutenant colonel sat under eucalyptus trees and expounded the kill-or-be-killed philosophy which President Roosevelt and Lieut. General Lesley J. McNair were to adopt in their speeches months later. "You've got to get in there and kill the Jap or he'll kill you," said Buzz...
...dogfight the Japs. You cannot do it with the planes you've got," said Buzz Wagner. But one day in May, when Wagner himself went along to initiate one of his green squadrons, some stragglers tried to dogfight Zeros with P-39s. Four of them were shot down. Four Japs were also shot down, three of them by Buzz Wagner, who knew better than to dogfight except when he had to. Buzz was bucking orders that day-a Jap bullet had splintered windshield glass into his left eye in the Philippines-but the chance to kill more Japs...
Engineer. The U.S. lost more than an ace pilot in Buzz Wagner. Before he joined the Air Corps in 1937 Buzz studied aeronautical engineering three years at the University of Pittsburgh, where he "failed to flash any scholastic lights." But he learned about airplanes and airplane engines as few pursuit pilots ever do. From what he learned in the acid test of battle, Buzz Wagner had keen ideas about improving U.S. planes. "Engineering is my profession," he used to say proudly...
Three months ago Buzz got his chance. Returned from New Guinea, he was assigned as an engineering expert to the Curtiss-Wright (P-40) plant, was sent around the U.S. several times to talk to the men who draw plans for U.S. planes. One of his stops was Wright Field, No. 1 U.S. airplane laboratory. There a noted engineer put the finest stamp on the fine career of Buzz Wagner. "During the two weeks Colonel Wagner was here," he said, "we learned more about what was needed in the way of certain airplanes than we learned in the previous year...