In our last installment of “A Hale Of Bullets,” we examined how the father and son pair of Henry and Lester Crown of General Dynamics openly admitted how they cleaned out the manufacturing of competitor North American Aviation and sent it lock, stock, and barrel to Israel.
This wholesale airlift included the F-86 Sabre jet, the F-100 Super Sabre jet, and the experimental F-106 Super Saber jet series.
The North American Aviation F-86 was the first design to use the Nazi aviation swept-back wings in design which was an important stepping stone to supersonic fighter aircraft with the North American F-100 and F-106. You can see how strategic this “acquisition” was for Henry and Lester Crown in 1967 as the US Air Force moved to supersonic fighters in Vietnam (known as the Century Series). (I worked for an F-100 Wild Weasel pilot in Vietnam for many years and heard many war stories.)
To recreate this feat of literally parting out the entire manufacturing line of a competitor of experiment, advanced aircraft, you would have to create a top-secret warehouse next to the Air Force’s Advanced Research Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio, at Wright Patterson Air Force Base. Well, Henry and Lester Crown of General Dynamics did exactly that near the Air Force Research Lab in Dayton, Ohio.
Here are a few photos from the Crown Equipment warehouse in New Bremen, Ohio, forty miles away.
Crown Equipment hires many military veterans because of their experience with military inventory systems, such as complex aircraft or helicopter parts lists. And now Crown Forklifts has been hacked by a military grade cyberweapon, shutting down their operations.
Is this the shape of things to come for future intellectual property attacks? There is no need to take down competitors any more and part out their manufacturing line. No the Henry Crown’s of today can just cyberhack to get the intellectual property they want.