Word: wasps
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...Whitney's experimental hangar at East Hartford, Conn. one day last week, the huge, red-tailed bomber looked like any other B-50. Actually, it was like no other plane in the world. The earth shook as Test Pilot Gil Haven revved up the plane's four Wasp Major engines, each one as powerful (3,500 h.p.) as a diesel locomotive. Then he sent the big silver plane thundering down Rentschler field, pulled it up into...
...forge ahead lies in the past performance of Fred Rentschler, who has probably done as much for U.S. aviation as anyone since the Wright brothers. Starting from scratch a quarter-century ago with fledgling Pratt & Whitney Aircraft Co., he transformed U.S. military and transport aviation with his air-cooled Wasp engine. In the late '20s and '30s, Wasps, Hornets and the famed Wright Whirlwind (which Rentschler had just produced) were the midwives for the birth of the Air Age. They powered the fighters for the Navy's new aircraft carriers, won the world's altitude record...
...tight-rope business, Rentschler is far from infallible. "We naturally make mistakes," says he, "but we have the guts and sense to make it go the next time." For example, the Wasp Majors in Boeing's Stratocruisers developed a long list of bugs when put into service. United went methodically to work to help eliminate them, and offered to provide replacement parts for the four lines using Stratocruisers. One line (United) got $1,200,000 worth of free parts. At home with his family, Rentschler relaxes-like an engine idling. He usually takes a Martini or two before dinner...
...power the tanks, Chrysler last week got a war order for $100 million worth of Continental-designed engines. It will make them in New Orleans' huge Higgins, Inc. (boats) plant. For another big war order-Pratt & Whitney J-4,8 Turbo-Wasp jet engines for Navy fighters-Chrysler will have to build another plant. Because cutbacks in auto production, brought on by material shortages, have already thrown thousands of workers out of their jobs in Detroit, Chrysler would build the plant near Detroit and put some of the idle hands to work. Chrysler was already producing special Army trucks...
...White House rose garden, President Truman presented the Harmon international aviation trophy, topnotch aviation award, to the outstanding aviator, aviatrix and aeronaut of the past decade: Lieut. General James H. Doolittle, wartime boss of the Eighth Air Force, leader of the first Tokyo raid; Jacqueline Cochran, wartime head of WASP, and dirigible expert Vice Admiral Charles E. Rosendahl (retired), wartime chief of Naval Airship Training...