Word: tunner
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...Completely Average." Tunner was born (1906) in Elizabeth, N.J. One of five children, he was, his mother remembers, "a completely average boy" until his last year in high school, when he got steamed up over the idea of going to West Point. He took the competitive exams for the Academy twice, once in Elizabeth and once in New Brunswick, N.J. In Elizabeth he stood first among the applicants, in New Brunswick second...
...Academy Tunner got adequate grades fairly easily, cut his share of capers. There were frequent poker sessions-"He's the world's worst poker player and crap shooter," says his brother-in-law-and there was one glorious weekend in New York when he met four girls from George White's Scandals. Attracted by Tunner's ' strong-jawed, straight-nosed good looks, all four of the girls took to visiting him, in bevy, at West Point, a development which permanently endeared Tunner to his Academy friends...
...West Point Tunner first met his roommate's sister, pretty Margaret Sams. Will fell hard for her, and took her out horseback riding, a sport at which he excelled. Margaret, too, fell hard-off her horse. She went home with a broken leg and a faithful correspondent at West Point. In June 1929, after Tunner had graduated from the Academy and from the Air Corps Flying School at Kelly Field, Texas, he and Margaret were married...
...Willie the Whip." Thirteen years after his graduation from West Point came the assignment that determined the shape of Tunner's Air Force career. In June 1941 he was named personnel officer of the newly formed Air Corps Ferrying Command and promptly began to eat and sleep air transport. Within a year he was a colonel and had command of the Air Transport Command's Ferrying Wing, charged with delivering aircraft to U.S. and allied forces in every theater...
Novelist Oliver LaFarge, a wartime Air Force officer, remembers Tunner as "cold in manner except with a few intimates . . . brilliant, competent . . . the kind of officer whom a junior officer is well advised to salute when approaching his desk." One of Tunner's fellow professional officers expanded on LaFarge's theme. Said he: "Will's great fault is his impatience. That business of wanting something yesterday, not today, is a little hard to take." But Tunner's toughness, which has led some of his present subordinates to christen him "Willie the Whip," gave his men efficiency...