He was the man no-one ever addressed by his first name. He was never James, and to call him Jim would have been unthinkable. James S. McDonnell founded the McDonnell Aircraft Co in 1939, with premises at the former Curtiss-Wright factory at Lambert Field, St Louis, Missouri.McDonnell created and nurtured a great fighter dynasty, making fighters with names like Voodoo, Phantom, Eagle and Hornet. But before his jets dominated the Cold War and the Vietnam era, his "family" was a small one; he knew all of his employees by theirfirst names and they addressed him as "Mister Mac". They worked with him on the soletwin-piston-engined XP-67 of the Second World War and the US Navy's (USN)FH Phantom and F2H Banshee jets of the post-war era. He was stiff, aloof and serious, but much-respected by his employees. The F3H Demon was the last product to emerge from his factory doors when his company was still of reasonable size, when folks in the"MacAir" family (as they called it) still knew each other, and at a time when America had 33 military aircraft Droduction lines instead of four.
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