another 1964 "the whole nine yards"? (UNCLASSIFIED)

victor steinbok aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM
Mon Jul 25 20:09:12 UTC 2011


Previously, one of the possibilities that was being discussed was on of nine
shipyards, but that trail went cold. I don't have any direct reference, but
I spotted an indirect one that I don't believe was previously mentioned. If
it's a rehash of already discovered information, my apologies. All I found
was Stephen Goranson's original post on Jan 31 this year (
http://goo.gl/vgQlJ ) which mentioned Henry Kaiser's proposal, but it
included no link to this text. Kaiser specifically mentioned the "nine
yards", but not "whole nine yards".

http://goo.gl/e82ia
Life. August 10. 1942
Henry J. Kaiser. Air Cargo Transport. p. 23

> Recently at the launching of the liberty ship Harvey W. Scott, the 53rd
> Liberty ship to go down the ways of our Portland yards, I proposed that nine
> of the Liberty shipyards in the U.S. be converted to the production of giant
> air transports. I stated further that within ten months after such a program
> was set in motion, these nine yards would be producing transport planes at
> the rate of 5,000 a year.



The brief intro from the editors made it clear that this was not merely some
crackpot idea that never went beyond that one speech:

Last week Henry J. Kaiser, the world's No. 1 shipbuilder (LIFE, June 29)
> crossed the continent from his home in Oakland, Calif. to Washington, D. C.
> to promote a great big idea. Mr. Kaiser, a week earlier, had proposed that
> the nation get busy immediately on the construction of a huge fleet of air
> cargo transports. In Washington, for two days he preached his cause to the
> members of two Senate committees, to a luncheon assembly of the National
> Press Club, to a bevy of female correspondents, and to all who would listen.
> Thereafter, Mr. Kaiser went into conference with officials in the war
> administration.


VS-)


On Mon, Jul 25, 2011 at 2:17 PM, Mullins, Bill AMRDEC <
Bill.Mullins at us.army.mil> wrote:

>
> Another early cite:
>
> _Assembly_, Fall 1965 p 53 col 3
>
> United States Military Academy. Association of Graduates, West Point
> Alumni Association, Inc
>
> " We have 60 of the 120 rooms reserved so far- why not take over "the
> whole 9 yards" as the teenagers say?"
>
> http://digital-library.usma.edu/libmedia/archives/assembly/vol24no3.pdf

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