Word: windshields
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...tail propellers were reduced to one, a seven-cylinder Warner radial engine was installed, the body was decently covered, slicked with windshield and windows. In tests, the Army found that it would do all that Igor Sikorsky had promised and more. It can hover so steadily that once an army man let down a ladder, got out on the ground, got back and pulled the ladder in after him before the pilot sent his craft aloft again...
Ducks, geese, gulls, eagles, buzzards and other birds are a hazard to aviation. A bird once smashed through a plane windshield, burst the metal bulkhead behind the pilot, hurtled the length of the cabin, broke into the baggage compartment in the tail. A 15-lb. turkey easily breaks conventional safety glass even at speeds under 100 m.p.h. Westinghouse shoots its chickens and turkeys at velocities up to 400 m.p.h. Results of the test: recommendations for thicker windshields than the usual safety glass. One type of panel developed has tempered glass on the outside, an air space, then two panes...
...close. The sky is full of them and there doesn't seem to be room to fly through. They get closer and you hear the whisper of them as they break in close. There is a gunlike report and a sharp pain in your shoulder. In the windshield a large hole through the safety glass. You think you've been hit. The co-pilot's wrist is bloody, and your shoulder feels numb. You can't go fast enough; you're crawling over that target. You've got to level off and fly straight...
...those days in the Southwest Pacific, much was done by trial & error. There was no low-altitude bombsight. Bill Benn improvised one by riding in the nose of a Fortress, marking crosses on the bombardier's plexiglass windshield until he got what he wanted. Then he made a few runs against an old hulk stranded off Port Moresby, found that his marks were good enough for accurate sights...
...some stragglers tried to dogfight Zeros with P-39s. Four of them were shot down. Four Japs were also shot down, three of them by Buzz Wagner, who knew better than to dogfight except when he had to. Buzz was bucking orders that day-a Jap bullet had splintered windshield glass into his left eye in the Philippines-but the chance to kill more Japs was too tempting...