Word: messerschmitt
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...last words were reported to be: "Sacrifices must be made." In the museum's military aviation exhibits, that sense of sacrifice is pervasive, if in a different context. The most durable warplanes are there: the Fokker, Spad XVI (Billy Mitchell's own), P-40E, B26, Spitfire, German Messerschmitt and Italian Macchi MC-202. So is the old workhorse of World War II-and beyond-the DC-3. Said one former combat pilot, standing before a full-scale diorama of aerial combat with a B-17 under attack: "It's so real that you want to duck...
Seen from their off-camera sides, however, Bruce's right and left look more like cutaway drawings of an old Messerschmitt 109. Each has a 25-ft. spine of tubular and spring steel, painted a decidedly unsharklike yellow, and 50 bright green, double-jointed ribs, housing some 500 ft. of plastic tubing, 25 remote-controlled valves and 20 electric and pneumatic hoses...
...system, called Gleitende Arbeitszeit (staggered work time) was begun four years ago by the aircraft and electronics firm of Messerschmitt-Bolkow-Blohm, mostly because company bosses saw no other way of breaking the thick traffic tie-ups that developed when all employees tried to arrive at 7 a.m. Staggered hours have since been adopted by some 2,000 other firms, which find that the new freedom pares absenteeism by as much as 20% and actually increases productivity...
Work Credit. Messerschmitt's system is fairly typical. Some 7,000 employees may punch in at any time between 7 a.m. and 8 a.m. and leave between 3:45 p.m. and 6 p.m. They still must put in an average of 42½ hours and work five days a week, but in any month they also have the option of working ten extra hours, building up a credit they can draw on for additional free time the next month, or putting in ten fewer hours and making them up the following month...
Erich Bolzer, a metalworker, says: "If I have enough hours on credit, I sometimes leave at noon, pack my family in my Ford, and visit the Munich shopping centers and bargain counters of the department stores. I figure that I save 15% to 20% in living costs this way." Messerschmitt officials are equally pleased: they find that employees arrange things among themselves so that the flow of work is not hurt...