Word: thunderbirds
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...Beautiful Meal. Then King went visiting, first privately to an R.C.A.F. bomber group whose squadrons bear the nostalgic names Snowy Owl, Alouette, Thunderbird and Goose. Later, with Canadian High Commissioner Vincent Massey and a retinue of correspondents in attendance, he ate an open-air lunch at a Canadian army camp. A foresighted quartermaster had sent to London for lobster to perk up the army menu. Cabled the Toronto Daily Star's Fred Griffin: ". . . the most beautiful meal I have eaten since leaving Canada nearly two years ago." The Prime Minister reviewed Canadian troops, made no speeches. In 1941, when...
Germany tightened up. The news in Berlin was bad. The Axis was losing North Africa. Italy, always uncertain, was growing more uncertain as the threat of invasion increased. Göring's Luftwaffe had failed to twist the neck of the thunderbird that nested in England and clawed at Kiel, Antwerp, Cologne, Paris, Essen, Berlin. Some 90,000 people had been, removed from industrial Essen's shattered, scattered homes. War labor was at a premium; war widows were ordered into the factories...
...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...