Word: convairs
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...April 1957, four days before Hopkins died of cancer, General Dynamics' directors, in defiance of Hopkins' wishes, elected Pace chairman of the company. When Pace took over, Hopkins had already committed General Dynamics to enter the commercial jet market with its Convair 880. Pace was enthusiastic about the plane too. "When the Government is awarding military contracts," he explains, "it looks with favor on a company with successful commercial accomplishments...
...fact that the line could not match the jet service offered by its competitors. To its aid late last year went Hughes, who at that time still controlled TWA and harbored a grand scheme for merging Northeast and TWA. Hughes let Northeast take delivery on six Convair 880s that he had originally ordered for TWA and gave Northeast a $9,500,000 loan to help cover the cost of the transition to jets...
...airplane and currently relies on its hot F-IO5 fighter-bomber for 98% of its business, has seen its sales dip from $547 million in 1955 to $215 million last year. The three big companies that winged into the commercial jet market were also hard hit: Boeing, Douglas and Convair spent some $700 million to develop their big jets, and only Boeing is in sight of the break-even point...
Already badly buffeted in the battle for the commercial jet market (TIME, Aug. 18), giant General Dynamics Corp. last week conceded that it may have to ground its Convair 990 before the plane ever goes into production. Reason: the 990 has developed a mysterious "drag" that keeps it from hitting the promised 640-m.p.h. cruising speed that would make it the world's fastest jet transport. Wind-tunnel tests to be completed next month will provide the data to determine whether the time and expense of eliminating the drag will be too great to bear...
Heart of TWA's case is the charge that Hughes tried to force TWA to use Hughes Tool Co. as a middleman on all its jet purchases. To begin with, TWA purchased 20 Convair 880s from Hughes Tool rather than directly from the manufacturer. General Dynamics. Next, charges the TWA complaint, Hughes tried to coerce TWA into agreeing to buy from Hughes Tool 13 Convair 990s (which Hughes had already contracted to buy from General Dynamics). When the Tillinghast team decided instead to buy Boeing 707s, Hughes allegedly sought to queer the deal by warning Boeing that its contract...