"the whole nine yards" 1942

[Bonnie Taylor-Blake]

Sam Clements wrote:

> Interesting.  I hadn't seen that before.  I'm sure, thought,
> that this is a
> reference to the nine railroad yards, which was derived from
> the "whole nine shipyards" cited earlier.  I'm sure.


I'm not so sure, Sam.  But perhaps I'm misreading you.

To me "the whole nine yards" here reads as that rather mysterious, now
familiar expression, something without a direct link to shipyards or
railroad yards.  Moreover, its appearance in the text Barry gives us seems
coincidental to the earlier use of "railroad yards" within that same
paragraph.  (In fact, if anything, Barry's find might hold appeal to a few
those devotees of the "nine yards of ammo" theory.)

Bob Hope, who had been hanging out with military types for decades, gives us
what Lt. George H. McKinney, Jr., told him about "what it takes to win a
[Distinguished] Flying Cross":

"We had just dumped our load on the railroad yards near Hanoi when Charlie
poured everything at us ... flak, Sams, Migs ... the whole nine yards all at
the same time.  We took a four-foot hole in the left wing and had other
various other problems."

In the end, then, I'm reading that it was this American pilot and his
colleagues who got (i.e., received) -- and didn't give -- the "the whole
nine yards all at the same time."

-- Bonnie

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