Word: plane
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...landing) airplanes have been designed and flown in wind tunnels around the world. Only a few have gone into production, and none has shown as much promise as the McDonnell Douglas 188, priced at about $4,000,000, on which Eastern Air Lines is pinning its hopes. The plane, developed by the French Breguet works and originally called Breguet 941, was renamed by its U.S. licensee, the St. Louis-based McDonnell Douglas Corp. For the tests, the 188 is being loaded with the latest in electronic gadgets, notably Decca-Omnitrac navigation, which, among other things, can fix the plane...
...prototype can seat 64, a tremendous advantage over its STOL and V/STOL rivals for interurban hops. The closest runner-up, Germany's Dornier Skyservant, seats only twelve; other STOL-type planes that have begun to enter the U.S. air-taxi/commuter business, like Canada's De Havilland Otter and the Helio Courier, have only a fraction of McDonnell Douglas' payload. Fully loaded, the plane can cruise at 250 m.p.h., land at speeds as slow as 55 m.p.h. on a 500-ft. runway; it can take off within 1,000 ft. (one-seventh the length of La Guardia...
...Hanky-Panky" makes no announcement of flights until about a half hour before they take off, McGuire notes, though the air-crews often suspect a flight is in the offing when the maintenance on a plane is finished and night approaches. Once the crews in their respective bars are alerted and "poured out into the planes," they take off on their flights for Biafra, juggling flight plans so as to fly always at night, when the Egyptians piloting Nigeria's MIG's refuse...
...Nigerians claim they shot the plane down--McGuire believes it crashed of natural causes, one might say--but one thing is sure; it was demolished. "The tail, that's the only thing you can see, sticking up in the jungle." Aboard were Augie Martin, a black American pilot earning a little extra money while on vacation from Seaboard World Airlines; Martin's wife Gladys, whom McGuire thinks had come along to gather material for an article on Biafra; Jess Meade, also an American: and a Rhoedesian with the pseudonym of "Bill Brown." Mr. Martin's head was never found, McGuire...
...well-known cliche, but McGuire slides into the type, probably not as a sham. He is more a soldier of fortune than soldier, however, for he says he never carried a gun, even for personal protection in Biafra. ("I figured we had enough guns and ammo on the plane already.") He left Biafra at the end of July, after his mother died in the United States and his close call made him suspicious of the safety of the airlift's flying procedures but he wants to return there, this time for expenses only...