Word: wingtips
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Last week the Air Force issued a report on the tragedy. Its findings: NASA Test Pilot Joseph A. Walker, whose formation flying was rusty, inadvertently allowed the Starfighter he was piloting to drift into the air vortex swirling around the Valkyrie's drooping wingtip. From that moment, a crash was inevitable. Trapped in the raging eddies, the fighter brushed its tail plane against the Valkyrie's wingtip, then pitched up and rolled onto its back, shearing off one of the XB-70's twin rudders as it went. Both planes then plunged, out of control, to earth...
Napoleonic Parallels. De Gaulle's visit began auspiciously enough with the warmest reception accorded any Western visitor in Soviet history. Seven MIG fighters locked in wingtip-to-wingtip formation escorted De Gaulle's plane to its landing. As the general deplaned in khakis and kepi, the band struck up La Marseillaise and a battery of antiaircraft cannon boomed 21 times-so loud and near that bystanders felt the breath of the guns. The honor guard was resplendent in grey, gold and red, and their rifle butts hit the ground with such popping precision that De Gaulle winced involuntarily...
American's Flight 383 from New York was approaching Cincinnati from the Kentucky side of the Ohio River. In a heavy rain squall, the pilot momentarily lost sight of the ground as he turned to line up with the runway. A wingtip snagged a nearby slope, slamming the plane down with such force that wreckage was strewn over a 400-sq. yd. area. Though local residents pulled four trapped passengers to safety, 58 others died in the flames...
...hour earlier with French air control, was France's Rhône Valley. His announced purpose: training for NATO defense. At 4:54 p.m., as he was making his second pass at 2,000 ft. over the Rhône town of Pierrelatte, Captain Smith was greeted wingtip to wingtip by an old French Vautour interceptor. He made two more passes over Pierrelatte and then headed back to Ramstein, where he touched down at 6:05. Waiting for him was an agitated reception committee, including a representative of the French armed forces, who stalked away with the plane...
...Viet Nam, President Johnson took other actions aimed at convincing the Communists that the U.S. really means business in Viet Nam. For one thing, he ordered an Okinawa-based battalion of 550 Marines armed with 54 Hawk ground-to-air missiles to Danang to protect scores of aircraft parked wingtip to wingtip on aprons. The Hawk is a killer at up to 45,000 ft. and at a distance of 22 miles, homes in on enemy aircraft by radar. The dispatch of the Hawks was merely an extra precaution against the possibility that some...