Word: hap
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Master of the Mightiest. An all-out disciple of Brigadier General Billy Mitchell, Hap Arnold suffered a brief exile in the Army doghouse when he appeared as a defense witness at Billy's court-martial. But thereafter, he rose steadily, always trumpeting the importance of air power. In his leisure, he wrote a series of boys' books on aviation (Bill Bruce Becomes an Ace). In 1938 he became Chief of the Air Corps. In 1942, when the Army Air Forces were set up as an independent arm within the Army, Hap Arnold was its chief...
...florid man who looked almost too handsome to be able, Hap Arnold hated to admit there was anything the Air Forces couldn't do. In his expansive vocabulary, U.S. bombers and fighters were always without peer, U.S. pilots "the cream of the world's manhood." His prophecies frequently had the wild, heady ring of the visionary, but more often than not, events proved him right...
Under the Oak Tree. At war's end Hap Arnold turned over his command to General Carl Spaatz with a laconic, "Take it, Tooey, it's all yours." He added defiantly: "I'm going out to my ranch in the Valley of the Moon to sit under an oak tree. From there I'll look across the valley at the white-faced cattle. And if one of them even moves too fast, I'll look the other...
...three years Hap Arnold sat on the redwood chairs he made himself in his woodworking shop and looked across the California valley. He wasn't exactly quiet: he wrote a book, and burst into print regularly with charges that the Air Force had been cut to "a one-punch outfit" by postwar economizers. When summoned by a congressional committee investigating charges of skulduggery in the procurement of the B-36, Arnold snapped brusquely: "Let's get this straight! You can't buy aircraft as you buy beans. I want it understood that no one man is responsible...
...energetic Hap Arnold had a bad heart. Last week he rose early, as usual, and told his wife he "felt pretty good." A few minutes later, his wife said, he "sat down on the bed and collapsed." By the time the local doctor arrived, Hap Arnold, 63, was dead. Said Dr. Russel V. Lee: "He should have quit during the war when he had his first attack [in 1944]. But things were hot then and he decided to take his chances with the rest of the soldiers and went back to duty...