Catching the Bird

For weeks, Ira Cain, 42-year-old military editor of Amon Carter's Fort Worth Star-Telegram, had been working to get a beat. He hoped to report the maiden flight at Fort Worth of Consolidated Vultee's big, new YB-60, the jet version of the B-36 bomber.

But last fortnight a planeload of Pentagon brass arrived at Convair's Fort Worth plant, dropped a curtain of security over the flight date, and barred all reporters. Cain, a staffer for the afternoon Star-Telegram, drove his car as close as he could get to the test field, and for days kept watch, until colleagues began calling him "Audubon Cain, the bird watcher." When he finally spotted the YB-60 in flight he could only swear; it was too late to make his last edition, and the morning Star-Telegram, also owned by Carter, would get the break on the story. Then, in a flight of B-36s hovering high overhead, Cain saw something odd. One of the B-36s let something drop. It shot away so fast that it was obviously either a rocket or jet fighter.

Cain excitedly realized that maybe he had stumbled on a better story than the YB-60. But when he quizzed sources at Convair with "What did I see?" he got only blank stares. Finally, as the Pentagon group started back to Washington, one officer told the persistent newsman: "Don't write about it, and I'll see if I can get it released."

Last week came the Washington telephone call giving Cain his beat. The story: Convair has turned a B-36 and an F-84 jet fighter into a "motherdaughter" team. The B-36 serves as a mother ship for the fighter, carrying it partly inside, and can launch it in flight and pick it up again. Using the team, the long-range B-36 could carry a short-range but speedy fighter close to a target, release it to drop an atom bomb. As the wire services carried Cain's story around the country, only one thing marred his pride: a woman reader telephoned to thank him because her husband had refused to believe her when she told him several weeks before about the B-36's new tricks. How she knew: a customer in the liquor store where she worked had told her all about it.

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