Heck, if you’re willing to join me on this path to lunacy, don’t forget that a lot of planes used .30 cal machine guns, and those bullets are smaller. But, they came in cans that were nearly the same length and height, so more bullets (and feet) per can.
For the record, I dove down this rabbit hole not because I believe the ammo belt theory (I’d always heard the coal truck story, though no mention of dividers, just that 9 yards was the full capacity of the truck), but because I wasn’t 100% satisfied that the ammo belt theory had been scientifically disproven. Whenever somebody says “That’s impossible”, part of me craves to prove them wrong.
That craving has been killed by the results of the math, however. I don’t think any ammo box held 9 yards of anything relevant, and am not about to research the ammo capacity of every plane in the war.
Skepticism is a fine thing, but so is research. The lengths of ammo belts have been studied repeatedly and the results given for dozens of varieties in the dozens of previous threads on this, here and elsewhere. People are saying that the length is wrong because they’ve looked into the issue and know that the length is wrong. They aren’t saying “it’s impossible” a priori.
My brother thought that “the whole 9 yards” was a reference to either coal mining or digging railroad tunnels. The idea was that “9 yards” reflected a work quota that was simply beyond human ability. The company would define that as the quota, and if the workers failed to meet it, they would not be eligible for bonus pay. But a person would die from exertion before reaching that goal.
He cannot recall ever having been told this, or reading it, but rather as a small child h learned about the quotas and realized that must be what “the whole 9 yards” referred to.
Which makes more sense than many theories, and has the advantage of, if true, having an origin pre-1900. But it probably isn’t true.
BTW, in terms of railroad tunnels, he felt it referred specifically to the drilling, bu driving a drill with a hammer, of holes for explosives. 9 yards depth drilled in one day. But then he thought maybe it had been coal mining, with 9 cubic yards dug. Which I can debunk right here, since 9 cubic yards of broken anthracite coal is roughly 8 tons, which is well within a person’s capacity for a day’s work, as in the song “16 tons” the titular amount may have been supposed to be impressive, but certainly not superhuman.
We’ve already discussed that in earlier posts of this thread. Furthermore, we discussed it in earlier threads. Bonnie Taylor-Blake is a member of this board. Yes, that resolves it if you think that is a resolution. Why six yards (and why increase it to nine yards)? Why yards and not feet, inches, or miles? Why a unit of length instead of one of weight like pounds or tons? Yes, the kilts or cement truck or ammo belt or yard arms explanations are almost certainly wrong. This is still just saying that it comes out of nowhere.
You know, I personally think we box ourselves into a corner when we focus on the number thing in “the whole X yards,” because that may well be variable, at least to the extent that the expression has so far involved two different numbers. I’m not sure any specific number is relevant in getting to how this expression originated (wherever it originated). So, permit me to drop the number thing for a moment.
I mentioned in an earlier thread that I do think there’s something very telling about the 1912 and 1916 Kentucky usages of “the whole six yards.” They incorporate “tell” and “give” (“give” in the sense of, as OED 16c puts it, “to tell [a person]; to offer for acceptance”), which for me suggests that the so-far earliest forms of this expression hinged on a theme of delivering of words (orally or in writing), a lot of words, the long version. That use of “give” persists in samclem’s very important find about 1964’s NASA-speak: “give 'em the whole nine yards is an item-by-item report on any project.”
Further, there are plenty of examples where “yard” (as measurement) is used not literally but, as OED 9b notes, “vaguely, hyperbolically, or figuratively.” And we have quite a few contemporaneous examples in which text (delivered orally or in writing) is measured in figurative yards.
For example, here’s something reported by an Indiana soldier serving in Europe in WWI.
That’s nine non-literal yards of language.
For me, this example and others of the period reinforce the notion that “the whole X yards” was essentially a folksy way of indicating that we’re dealing with the *long *version (of the story/report). Though we eventually settled on “nine,” the number was pretty much arbitrary, but at the start it would’ve had to have been something larger than, say, two or three to have stressed “a lot.”
Faced with this data, I find the theory that “the whole X yards” must be based on a literal X yards of something tangible (fabric for kilts, ammunition belts, covering for cotton bales, a measurement relevant to coal mining, etc.) not particularly compelling and, even more, pretty much unnecessary.