Word: mosquito
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...Mosquito Fleet...
Upping battleship tonnages by 10,000 is like stepping from a twelve into a 16-cylinder car. Last week the U. S. Navy also prepared to get itself a motorcycle. It awarded to seven civilian designers prizes for motor torpedo ("mosquito") boats, 54 to 70-footers which any fireside sailor can comprehend...
First prize ($15,000) for 70-foot mosquitoes went to the Manhattan firm of Sparkman & Stephens, whose Partner Olin Stephens in 1931 skippered the 52-foot racing yawl Dorade across the Atlantic in 17 days, 2 hours 14 minutes, later was a codesigner of Harold Vanderbilt's Cup-winning Ranger. As a specialist in sailboats for rich men, famed young (30) Mr. Stephens left the designing of a motored mosquito to his expert helper, Gilbert Wyland, was modestly annoyed when Designer Wyland gave the credit to his boss. Another $15,000 for the best 54-footer...
...Real mosquitoes, as distinguished from subchasers, must be fast enough and small enough to dart among an enemy fleet, loose torpedoes at murderous range. Benito Mussolini's Navy perfected them, used them to good advantage against Loyalist Spain and even showed the way to British mosquito designers (including famed Racer Hubert Scott-Paine). For the price of a 45,000-ton battleship, the U. S. Navy probably could build 750 mosquitoes, as an experiment plans to order four immediately. On the theory that the U. S. probably will never have to fight a naval war at home, Navy...
...Orson Welles, in his now famous broadcast of October 30. 1938, had announced not that the Martians had landed in New Jersey, but that a mosquito called Anopheles gambiae, a native of Africa, had arrived on the American continent, there would have been no public alarm. . . . But Anopheles gambiae is potentially a much more dangerous invader than the Martians would have been. H. G. Wells's Martians, it will be remembered, were unable to adjust themselves to life on this planet and quickly died...