"Whole nine yards" : some negative evidence [addendum]

[Dave Wilton]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU]On Behalf
> Of Wilson Gray
> Sent: Sunday, October 31, 2004 8:01 PM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Re: "Whole nine yards" : some negative evidence [addendum]
>
>
> Don't forget that, during WWII, the Air Force was part of the Army,
> first, as the "U.S. Army Air Corps," later, as the "U.S. Army Air
> Force." The Air Force didn't become a separate branch of service till
> after the war. As a consequence, we could logically expect that zoomie
> slang would leak into other Army units, especially given that the Army,
> like the Air Force, also uses various calibers of belted ammo. "The
> whole nine yards" was not G.I. slang when I was in the Army. This
> brings up another problem, that of uniformity.
>
> If all ammo meant for use in belts was meted out so that every round
> would fit into a standard ammo belt of a uniform length of nine yards,
> then the number of rounds in each such belt would vary according to the
> caliber of the ammo that it held. That's not S.O.P.

The Burt Reynolds movie is "The Longest Yard" (1974). There is a movie
called "The Whole Nine Yards (2000), but that stars Bruce Willis.

And technically, the "US Army Air Force" (as opposed to "Air Corps") was
formed in 1941, before US entry into the war. In March 1942, it became the
"US Army Air Forces," and while nominally part of the US Army, it in effect
operated as an independent service. Gen Henry "Hap" Arnold served on the
Joint Chiefs of Staff when it was formed, the equal of Gen. Marshall of the
Army and Adm. King of the Navy. There wasn't much contact between units of
the ground Army and the Army Air Forces. The training camps and operational
bases were different and the opportunities for sharing lingo were minimal.
Pre-war Army slang and jargon were certainly inherited by the Army Air
Forces, but lingo that arose during the war would be unlikely to make its
way into the other component.

The machine gun tale of "the whole nine yards" is quite specific and does
not, with one exception, refer to infantry machine guns. Instead, it quite
specifically refers to fighter plane ammunition. The type of plane varies
with the telling, most often the P-51 in Europe, the P-38 in the Pacific,
and the Spitfire in the RAF.

The infantry variant claims the phrase arose with WWI (yes, the 1914-18 war)
.30-cal machine gun crews in the trenches.

It's bad enough that we speculate; we shouldn't expand the scope of the
folklore as we do so.


--Dave Wilton
  dave at wilton.net
  http://www.wilton.net