Word: hellcatted
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...times, the Navy is so impressed that it has already given Grumman a $40 million experimental and production contract for an estimated 40 to 50 planes. The company cannot say when the first production model will roll off the lines. But Grumman, which had its famed World War II Hellcat in Navy squadrons before the roof was even on its Bethpage, L.I. plant, managed to turn out the Tiger prototype in just 15 months, has designed it specifically for fast, easy production...
...overtaken outposts, who have escaped over jungle trails or by floating down chutelike rapids on improvised rafts. Behind them come five Viet Minh columns, the nearest now within sight of us. They have traveled fast, but they have not had an easy passage. On the way in, we saw Hellcat and Bearcat fighters filling the tight green valleys with the orange-red bursts and the soot-black smoke of napalm. Now the sound of bursting bombs comes like slow thunder from the distant valleys...
Like Sterling. In developing a new weapon tailored for an exacting Navy job, Grumman once more carried out its 23-year-old mission as the chief supplier of Navy planes. During World War II it turned out 17,000 planes, including Hellcat and Wildcat fighters, the backbone of the Navy's carrier squadrons. To the Navy, said the late Vice Admiral John C. McCain, the name Grumman was like "sterling" on silver...
Back in Tokyo after an interesting trip, U.P.'s Robert Gibson and A.P.'s Fred Waters wrote the story anyway of how they had seen Grumman Hellcat fighters, carrying TV transmitters, take off without pilots and be guided from "mother" planes. They thought censors might clear the story. They also mailed their home offices uncensored carbons of the stories to use in trying to get clearance from the Pentagon. The I.N.S.'s Don Dixon, taking the Navy at its word on the supersecrecy, did not even write the story...
...additional facts gave it top Page One play in many papers. In Washington, Navy brass called in all three services to find out who had leaked secrets and why. Retorted U.P.: What secrets? Popular Science had run a story about the possibilities of equipping Hellcat "missiles" with TV as long ago as April...