"Whole nine yards" : some negative evidence

[Douglas G. Wilson]

>.... Furthermore, we should remember that the "explanation," NEVER given
>in the first person ("WE always used to say 'the whole nine yards' in
>WWII" or Korea, or whenever, because of the ammo belts) seems to have
>surfaced decades after that.

Again, not quite "never"!

There are to my knowledge two identifiable persons (not including anonymous
BBS posters, etc.) who have made this sort of first-person claim accessible
on the Web. One of them is WW II fighter pilot Leroy Roberts: here is an
interview transcript:

http://www.wwiihistoryclass.com/transcripts/Roberts_L_020.pdf

The other (I have corresponded with this one and he seems superficially
reasonable and credible) is apparently an alumnus of the US Navy flight
school at Pensacola where (he says) the expression was used in its modern
sense ca. 1950, and was said then to be from the length of an ammo belt.

However, given the known unreliability of human memory, I don't fully buy
anything like this without contemporary documentation.

-- Doug Wilson