Word: pinedo
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...WANT TO BECOME A DE PINEDO...
...over Italy flared that legend six years ago. It was the recruiting slogan of the Italian Air Force. In hotels, drinking rooms, barber shops, banks, the legend was pasted above maps of the world, on which the course of the seaplane Santa Maria, captained by Commander Francesco de Pinedo ("Messenger of Italianity," "Conqueror of the Air"), was charted from Sardinia to West Africa, across the South Atlantic to Brazil, around South America and up to New Orleans, thence across the desert to Roosevelt Lake. Ariz. There careless mechanics let gasoline spill out on the water. A numskull gawper flipped...
Benito Mussolini sent a new seaplane to Manhattan for his messenger to fly home. Meanwhile Pinedo-worshipping Italians raised a half-million lire (about $26,000) to buy a new plane. The money, unused, was lodged in a bank...
...years later Hero de Pinedo was a general, chief of staff for Italian aviation, leading squadron flights in which one pilot was hot-blooded Italo Balbo, then Undersecretary for Air. Everywhere they went, de Pinedo was the hero. But no Italian youth in his right mind who knew Italo Balbo would have then wanted "to become a de Pinedo." Balbo learned that the forgotten $26,000 was still in the bank and that de Pinedo had been accepting $20 a week interest on the money. A word to Il Duce, a telephone call to de Pinedo: "Your resignation as Chief...
General Francesco de Pinedo, Italy's onetime Chief of Staff for Aviation and round-the-world flyer, announced in Manhattan that he is thinking of raising potatoes in China. Said he: "There are 400,000,000 people in China and if every Chinese eats one potato a day that would be 40,000,000 kilos a day. That's a lot of potatoes...