MANUFACTURING: Airacobra

Last spring many an American Airlines pilot, stopping for passengers at Buffalo, N. Y., sunburned the roof of his mouth watching the test flights of a new pursuit ship that the U. S. Army Air Corps called XP-39. Slim as a lance, it ripped across the field faster than anything they had ever seen, faded to a dot against the sky before the thunder of its exhaust had echoed off the hangar walls. And when it came home to roost, at the hangar of Bell Aircraft Corp., it waddled up to the apron...

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