Word: plastics
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Crouching spraddle-legged on the parking strips at McGuire Air Force Base, N.J., a line of sleek, grey jet planes with round plastic noses waits day & night for the summons to take the air. They are "all-weather interceptors" (Lockheed F-94s of the 52nd Fighter All-Weather Wing), ready to leap at a moment's notice into action against an enemy invader. The signal they are waiting for is a speck on a radarscope, picked up perhaps in Newfoundland or on a ship at sea. If the Russians come over the pole or Greenland (the shortest route), interceptors...
McGuire's jet planes are always ready; their engines need no warming up. The crews are waiting, too, close to the waiting planes. It takes them only minutes to jump into their gear, clap on their helmets, cram themselves into the cockpits and lower the plastic canopies. The engines whine, shoot a fine mist of kerosene from their tail pipes, then a burst of flame that shrinks to a faint blue cone...
...Kill. Inside the plane's plastic nose (transparent to radar) is a metal "dish" antenna that spins rapidly on its axis and at the same time swings with an odd back & forth motion. In doing this mannered dance, it probes the air ahead with far-reaching radar pulses. If the air is empty, a single line of light glows on the radar-man's scope. When a pulse bounces back from the enemy, a jog or "blip" appears in the line...
After the big snow I located my set of wheels by the red plastic tip on the antennae which barely protruded from the drifts. But when I approached it I saw that the police had tunneled in their cute way to the right windshield wiper. Adding insult to injury they tied the tag to the rubber part of the wiper with a knot any boatswain would have admired. It defied knives and fingernails. Finally, I stripped it off and the rubber left the wiper like a peel leaving a banana...
Cyril can now swallow and talk haltingly. A final graft will soon give his new tongue a tip, Cyril's doctors hope, and restore his rich, native brogue. "It was an unusual operation," said modest Plastic Surgeon J. P. Reidy last week, "only because it was an unusual accident...