Word: thunderbird
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Henry Fonda, bought a small civilian school at Phoenix, hired six instructors. A little later he bought a one-mile desert tract outside the city, ploughed out the cactus and rattlesnakes, built a palacelike Air Corps training center with pastel-colored buildings, olive orchards, tennis courts and bright red Thunderbird insignia over everything. The first Thunderbird graduates got their diplomas only four months after the desert was broken, had a bang-up graduation party with pretty Hollywood starlets, listened to Hoagy Carmichael (also a Southwest stockholder) pound the piano...
...from the British Government, still more from his friends, slapped up Falcon Field 25 miles east of Phoenix. This succeeded right off the bat -Southwest was on its way. To handle the Army's stepped-up pilot program Hayward expanded the original civilian school and built Thunderbird Field II. To overhaul training planes and engines he set up a big repair depot. To haul high-priority military cargo he started an airline over a censored Pacific Coast route. Meanwhile Southwest trained thousands of pilots (27 nationalities but mostly U.S., British and Chinese), expanded its staff time & again...
...Cracked Hayward: "We pledged everything up to our homes and children. If my wife [Cinemactress Margaret Sullavan] had ever known she would have shot me." Hayward's break came when the Army decided pilot-training schools were too risky for private capital, got Defense Plants Corp. to buy Thunderbird for its net cost price. Now Hayward gets a straight fee per cadet-hour flown, pays rent to DPC, keeps the balance for instructors, gas and maintenance...
...have been trained in a hodgepodge of Chinese, Russian and U.S. methods. In U.S. air schools, under Army-supervised private instructors, they will be taught to handle U.S. Lend-Lease bombers and fighters in the manner to which the planes have been accustomed. Anticipated output of Chinese airmen at Thunderbird, which is operated by Southwest Airways, Inc.: 200 Chinese trainees every 20 weeks...
...Chinese students at Thunderbird last week were traditionally inscrutable. Mum on all matters, they admitted only that they were "velly happy...