Word: cockpit
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...William F. McKee, 58, retired Air Force general, will become Federal Aviation Agency administrator, replacing undynamic Najeeb Halaby, who has resigned and plans to write a book called Washington Cockpit. Virginia-born, West Pointer "Bozo" McKee is little known to the civilian aviation industry, but made a name for himself in the Air Force as a management expert; he is the only non-aviator ever to be made a four-star Air Force general. McKee was Air Force Vice Chief of Staff before he retired last August to join the National Aeronautics and Space Administration...
Coming in Low. A truly versatile Jack-of-all-trades, McAllister until recently loaded his own smoke bombs (with which to mark guerrilla targets), owing to a shortage of hands at his base airport in Quinhon in Central Viet Nam. But it was in the cockpit of his light observation plane that he made himself a legend of skill and courage...
...remarkable instrument of warfare. It can carry twelve 750-lb. bombs or eight pods of 19 rockets each, and has a six-barrel, 20-mm. cannon that can fire 4,000 rounds per minute. Loaded, it weighs 48,400 Ibs., and its top speed exceeds 1,660 m.p.h. Its cockpit is a bewildering jungle of more than 75 switches, toggles and levers...
...killed. But his professionalism saved him. He now describes the experience with almost clinical detachment: "The target that day was a radar station in North Viet Nam. I was janking [changing altitude and direction continuously] when I got hit by ground fire. They got me four feet behind the cockpit, in the engine. I had to make a 180° turn to get out over the sea. When I got to the coastline, I figured I was safe. But in the water was an enemy gunboat, so I had to keep on going. Suddenly the plane flipped over...
CHIEF WARRANT OFFICER MECKIE I. KEYS, 33, is a greying, 16-year Army veteran from St. Petersburg, Fla., where his wife and five children live. Twelve years ago, as a 1st sergeant in a tank battalion, Keys decided to move from turret to cockpit, enrolled in the Army's aviation school. Today he flies a lumbering Caribou transport out of Vungtau on the South China Sea, 40 miles southeast of Saigon...