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Wisconsin’s
Flying Trees: The Plywood Industry’s Few people might realize it, but World War II was won in part by Wisconsin plywood. The Wisconsin plywood industry’s contribution to WWII had its extraordinary beginning in central Wisconsin. Ultimately, it had an international impact on the outcome of the war. More that 25,000 gliders and aircraft made of wood and plywood, Wisconsin‘s "Flying Trees," were manufactured during the war. These included the de Havilland Mosquito – nicknamed the "Wooden Wonder" – which was considered one of the most effective bombers available to the Allied forces. The U.S. Army Air Corps’ wooden gliders were a key component in battles across Europe, Africa and Burma, including the D-Day invasion. Howard Hughes, an aviation legend of the 1940s, along with Henry J. Kaiser, known as the "father of shipbuilding," used Wisconsin plywood products for manufacturing ships and planes, most notably the "Spruce Goose." The central Wisconsin communities of Marshfield, Stevens Point, and Wisconsin Rapids provided a range of wood products made from the forests of northern Wisconsin. Most of the aviation plywood used in the war was manufactured in Marshfield at the Roddis Lumber and Veneer Co. The logs for the plywood and veneer came from northern Wisconsin including Rusk, Price, Ashland, Iron and Vilas counties and their communities such as Park Falls, Butternut and Phillips. |
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His official name was LaVerne Browne. But you had better not try using the LaVerne if you knew what was good for you. He was "Brownie" to the world, at least to the flying world. In fact, there was only one person I knew of, Johnny Martin, Chief Test Pilot of the Douglas Aircraft Company, who used a shortened version, Verne, and got away with it. |
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Editor‘s note: This article originally appeared in /font>Fortress for Freedom, the newsletter of the 388th Bombardment Group (H) Association, and is reprinted here with their permission. Between April 29 and May 8, 1945, one of the greatest humanitarian endeavors of the 20th century occurred and, just as quickly, became largely overlooked in the annals of WWII. Dubbed "Chowhound" by the Americans and "Manna" by the British, this series of food drops over western Holland saved the lives of countless thousands of Dutch people, who were literally starving to death. Operation Chowhound
Ever since its occupation had begun in May 1940, The Netherlands and its peoples had been a constant thorn in the side of Nazi Germany. With Queen Wilhelmina and her government safe in England, the country refused to accept a Vichy-like government (such as that established in France), forcing the Nazis to impose their own regime under Reichskommissar Arthur Seyss-Inquart. |
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By mid-1945, WWII was in its final months. Aircraft production was slowing down and military contracts were being cancelled. Research and development engineers at Douglas, Santa Monica, were busy designing the aircraft that would serve the airlines in the coming postwar expansion years. They reasoned that three basic models with growth potential would be required for the short, medium, and long-haul route systems. |
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Sentimental
Journey; This
is the third in a series of short histories of the air fields of America’s "Forgotten Air Force," the Sixth Air Force, which commenced in the Summer 2003 (Vol. 48, No. 2) issue of the Journal describing France Field, Canal Zone, followed by that for Albrook Field, Canal Zone, in the Spring 2005 (Vol. 50, No. 1) issue. These have been prepared with materials collected for the author‘s definitive history of Army aviation in defense of the Panama Canal and the Caribbean, ‘ALAE SUPRA CANALEM: The Sixth Air Force and Antilles Air Command‘ (Turner Publishing Co., Paducah, Ky.), which were too extensive to be included in that title, and thus they are presented here as a memorial to the men and women who served in that far-off land where there was truly "No Ground to Give." There is no memorial, no marker, no surviving symbol to commemorate their service in the former Canal Zone and the Caribbean.
In the era when large coastal defense guns still dominated military planning for the protection of the then new Panama Canal, it had been recognized almost from the start that the guns at Fort Amador and Fort Grant on the Pacific approaches to the Canal entrance were utterly unable to bring their guns to bear on the waters behind the 1,000 foot height of Taboga Island, leaving what amounted to a dead space in the defense planning that any potential aggressor would be unlikely to neglect. The Early Years
Measures were initiated in September 1925 to correct that gap when Maj. Gen. William Lassiter, then Commander of the Panama Canal Department, informed the Governor that the Army wished to install coastal defense guns near Bruja Point, on the west bank of the Canal’s Pacific entrance. |
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Barrel-Nosed
Cigars; The Lockheed Air Express Editor‘s note: This article originally appeared in the AAHS Journal, Vol. 9, No. 1, Spring 1964. Though most of the airplanes that have poured from the factory doors of Lockheed Aircraft Corporation have carried the names of stars and heavenly bodies on their winged insignia, there were exceptions. A notable one being a handful of parasol-wing, single-engined, open-cockpit airplanes built between 1928 and 1931. They were called the Lockheed Air Express. |
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Building a Lockheed Super Constellation
In order to generate interest and excitement build-up to delivery with the airlines, Lockheed occasionally created a progress report following a specific aircraft‘s construction. These reports were
photo essays compiled into an updatable binder. Updates were then sent on a regular basis to the airline. Not many of these books were created and even fewer still survive. The AAHS has an example in its collection for Compania Cubana de Aviacion, S.A. (Cubana Airlines) Lockheed contract LX-121, ship construction number 4557, an L-1049E Super Constellation. |
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Remember When
. . . Skylark Skycraft For those of us who recall the period, a boom in general aviation was to take place following World War II. It was anticipated that returning airmen would trade their wartime aircraft, flown in hostile skies, for light planes flown over peaceful American terrain. The return of many veteran pilots, aviators and airmen was to be the catalyst behind the figurative statement "an airplane in every garage," and it gave impetus to artists‘ conceptions of smiling families flying to vacation destinations in futuristic light planes. Aviation magazines of the day reinforced this vision by depicting modern-day housing developments with a runway and individual taxiways leading up to each new home. |
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