Model Airplanes

KLAMATH FALLS, Ore. (AP) — Through a seemingly endless parade of books, movies, documentaries, archival footage and photographs, World War II and its impact still seem so accessible even though its origins began over 75 years ago.

Among the items on display at a new exhibit at the Klamath County Museum of one of the key battles of that war are handmade aircraft models, showing a unique and local perspective of life on the homefront during the war.

While Klamath County sent many of its young men and women off to war, the effort at home was dedicated as well. Timber mills and factories churned out wood products for the war effort at a frantic pace, and the rail lines steadily shipped materials to the front. Families grew victory gardens, bought war bonds, and kids collected scrap metal.

Among those young kids in Klamath Falls doing their part was Chuck Johnson, now 88, who vicariously connected with the epic air battles of the war by developing a passion for wooden World War II aircraft models.

In 1942, Johnson saw a peer with an aircraft model and bought it from him for a quarter. He soon found out that Wes Withrow, owner of a woodshop in the Mills Addition, had made it, and, along with other students, an after-school model-making club soon formed.

Using magazines and an Aeronautic Aircraft Spotters Guide for Civil Defense, kids ages 12-13 carved wood blocks leftover from local mills into intricate models of the fighters and bombers immersed in combat overseas.

Using

Article source: http://www.dailyprogress.com/oregon-museum-displays-wwii-models-built-years-ago/article_c55002ef-ccb9-5810-bbc8-647e26f72094.html

Boeing Co. is about to go on the offensive after watching Airbus SE creep into a market segment the U.S. planemaker had dominated since the 1980s.

Responsibility for the success or failure of the new initiatives falls to a relative newcomer: Kevin McAllister, a 27-year General Electric Co. veteran. On the job a little more than six months, he’s the first outsider to run Boeing’s $65 billion commercial airplanes division.

The multibillion-dollar bets he’s guiding represent Boeing’s response to the sales boom Airbus has enjoyed by inexpensively updating older jet programs. The riskiest gamble is on an all-new Boeing aircraft family to cover the gap between the biggest narrow-body planes and smallest wide-bodies. Another is for a larger 737 Max, expected to launch later this month, to take on Airbus’s hot-selling A321neo.

Both members of the global jetliner duopoly also have to contend with aircraft-development programs in Russia and China. That takes McAllister back to the painting in his office depicting the heyday of the steel works in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, his hometown. The memory of the now-shuttered mills helps provide perspective, he said, that success isn’t assured for the titans of U.S. industry — not even for Boeing, the country’s largest exporter.

“It’s a reminder that as a company we have to reinvent ourselves every day,” McAllister, who now works out of a Seattle-area office park, said during his first meeting with reporters June 2.

Max 10

The first of the new

Article source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-08/boeing-s-rookie-plane-boss-plots-assault-on-airbus-with-new-jets

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Article source: http://www.yakimaherald.com/news/business/regional/boeing-revs-up-robots-for-x-in-everett-factory-signals/article_ae4f738a-4c9c-11e7-9963-9f7ac5f61fec.html