Word: hellcats
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...Navy tirelessly trumpets the Hellcat record. In the first five months of this year, Navy pilots officially blasted out of the air 444 Jap planes, destroyed another 323 on the ground. The Navy lost only 71 planes, mainly because Hellcats, when they are seemingly held together only by will power, limp home to their carriers somehow. In the battle of the Marianas, which Navy flyers scoffingly call the "turkey shoot," Hellcats shot down 360 Jap planes in one day, the greatest aerial bag of the war. In this combat, the Navy lost only 22 planes...
Down U-Boats. The Japs also respect a smaller brother of the Hellcat, the Wildcat fighter, and a halfbrother, the Avenger, a torpedo bomber. The Germans learned to respect them also in the once nip-&-tuck Battle of the Atlantic. With a "now-it-can-be-told" flourish, the Navy has let out the news that the most potent weapon of all against the U-boats were Wildcats, flying from baby flattops, and rocket-firing Avengers. In one six-month period, these planes sent 31 U-boats to the bottom, more than half of the entire total sunk...
...Hellcat's Father. The father of the Hellcats is a medium-sized, 49-year-old man. He has a pink face, seamed with hundreds of tiny wrinkles, sharp, bright blue eyes, sandy red hair and the twanging voice of a New England storekeeper. He is stoop-shouldered and extraordinarily shy, moves about as if he hopes no one will notice him. A Navy flyer, meeting him for the first time, said: "You don't look like the guy who builds Hellcats." Roy Grum man looks more like the suburban fellow who lives next door...
...desk, he picked up a square gum eraser and a handful of paper lips and went to work. He stuck the clips m the eraser, worked them back & forth until he had the solution. He believes you can "see things that way you can't on a blueprint." Hellcat wings now fold back as neatly as a bird...
...Hellcat Birth. Shortly after World War II began, Grumman heard that the Wildcats, which were in production, were having trouble with Jap Zeros. So Swirbul hopped to Pearl Harbor, buttonholed Navy flyers ("just calling on the trade," says Grumman), listed their complaints. Back at Bethpage, he cocked his feet on the desk, read them to Grumman...