Word: haps
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...could be said to personify the U.S. Air Force, General Henry Harley ("Hap") Arnold was that man. He attended its birth, grew up with it, commanded it all through its great years in World War II. He was its first five-star general...
Born the son of a country doctor near Philadelphia, Hap Arnold was the fourth U.S. pilot to be commissioned. Those were the days when the Air Corps had four planes and was a branch of the Signal Corps. Hap was taught to fly in Dayton by the Wright brothers. The planes he flew made 42 miles an hour and the only instrument was a piece of string tied to the undercarriage; if it did not tail straight back, the plane was sideslipping. Hap was the first to direct artillery fire by airborne radio, the first to show that planes could...
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...