Word: daredevils
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Copper-Bellied Corpse. The American folk who emerge from this lore are robust, daredevil, imaginative, fond of broad humor, tender love, great deeds, crude, rude, sometimes full of noble sentiment, sometimes intolerant. They glorify outlaws (Jesse James, Wild Bill Hickok, Billy the Kid), poke fun at woodsmen (Mike Fink, Davy Crockett), sanctify Johnny Appleseed. The U.S. gift for tall talk is flaunted in Sven, the Hundred Proof Irish man, and speeches by General Buncombe ("Sir, we want elbow room - the continent, the whole continent - and nothing but the continent"). The U.S. talent for epithet is flaunted...
Correspondents who interviewed Major Howard found no daredevil youngster, but a lanky, quiet-spoken, 30-year-old veteran air fighter with thinning reddish hair, a slow smile. They also found that the "one-man-air-force's" private war with the Luftwaffe had lasted for about 30 minutes, and included at least five combats with individual Nazi planes within the pattern of the general melee...
Above all, he considered himself a scientist, which he was. In an era when "test pilot" was often a synonym for "daredevil," he persuaded manufacturers that the test pilot should be consulted before the plane was built. "You would not call in an architect after you had built a house," he said...
...Eisenhower is a young general (52), and under him, in vital points of command, are young men. Youngest is 45-year-old Brigadier General James Harold Doolittle, the weather-beaten little man who led U.S. bombers over Tokyo and won a Congressional Medal of Honor for his exploit. Daredevil flyer, Jimmy Doolittle has a long list of aviation "firsts." He was first to span the continent in a single day, first Army pilot to do the hazardous outside loop, first to try an experimental kind of blind flight. Jimmy Doolittle is in command of Eisenhower's air force...
...formation acrobatics of his Men on the Flying Trapeze, at fields where he was stationed as a flying officer, Claire Chennault never left anything to chance-beyond the possibility of a failing motor when his pursuit ship was on its back. As studious on the ground as he was daredevil in the air, he spent hours planning his acrobatic shows. He taught his youngsters precision flying, discipline, teamwork...