Word: demon
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Golden Demon (Daiei; Harrison). The Japanese soul has been described as a lotus bud stitched up to look like a big-league baseball. In it, the traditional Eastern longing for a spiritual flowering is crudely merged with the modern Western urge to get to first base. Golden Demon, except for Hiroshima the only postwar picture from Japan in which the U.S. moviegoer can learn anything specific about 20th century Japanese life, tells a story of how this broken culture broke two lovers' hearts...
...Washington hearing room last week a House Government Operations subcommittee started to investigate the fiasco of the Navy's F3H1 Demon jet fighters, built by McDonnell Aircraft and powered by Westinghouse engines. Five of the carrier planes crashed and four more are flying with other engines; 21, never to fly, may be used only for Navy ground training. Estimated loss: $200 million...
What the probers brought out was a story of men under pressure straining to do the best job they could, and making mistakes. J. S. McDonnell, president of St. Louis' McDonnell Aircraft Corp., testified that the Demon was originally a 22,000-lb., short-range interceptor. By early 1951 the Navy, engaged in Korea, sent a hurry-up call for something to meet the MIG on a fairly even basis. It wanted to redesign the plane, change it from the short-range to a mediumrange, all-weather fighter. This meant adding 7,000 Ibs. to the plane...
...that it had failed to supply the Navy with the kind of engine the Navy expected. Back in 1948, the Navy gave Westinghouse a contract to perfect a more powerful model of the J40 jet engine, which Westinghouse was then developing. The improved model was to go into the Demon fighters. But Westinghouse ran into a multitude of troubles. It lacked the engineers and experimental facilities to develop the engine which proved full of bugs, e.g., excessive fuel consumption. As a stopgap, when the Navy was desperately in need of jet fighters for the Korean war, the J40 was installed...
...Westinghouse engine flop crippled more than the Demon program. Five other Navy planes, which had been designed to take Westinghouse engines, were canceled, redesigned or delayed. Resulting loss to the Government: upwards of $100 million. The flop cost Westinghouse all its Government jet contracts, millions in potential profits and a big chunk of prestige...