Word: air-raid
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...raid was a total surprise. The city was ablaze with light, and not a single air-raid alarm sounded. The Libyans hastily put up a hail of antiaircraft fire, but their Soviet-made SAMs, fired without radar guidance, were wildly inaccurate. "We forced the Libyans to turn off their radar," says Navy Secretary John Lehman. "They knew if they turned them on to guide their missiles, they would get a HARM down the throat." Nor was any defense mounted by the Libyan air force, whose pilots are notoriously poor night flyers. Five F-111s were assigned to hit Colonel Gaddafi...
...squadron of A-6 fighters roared over Benghazi from the Gulf of Sidra and began bombing the airfield. In Tripoli, part of the F-111 squadron had circled around inland and approached from the south. The city was ablaze with light, and not a single air-raid alarm sounded. "We were able to see the hits," recalled one Navy airman, who had spent many hours studying photos of his target. "They looked just where they should have been...
Some 7,000 miles away from Middleport, schoolchildren in Tokyo practice drills very much like the air-raid exercises of the '50s, ducking under their desks at the screech of an alarm. Reason: if a large earthquake hits the city-as one did in 1983-the network of gas pipes that circulates throughout Tokyo could explode, unleashing, among other things, a deadly blizzard of flying glass...
Once again the familiar tremors swept through Nicaragua. In the streets of Managua, the capital, dozens of Soviet-made T-55 tanks clattered into defensive positions. Antiaircraft crews manned their batteries, while zealous neighborhood defense committees scurried to dig air-raid trenches. Some 20,000 volunteer coffee pickers were reassigned to local militia units as the Sandinista government announced a "state of alert" affecting the country's 100,000-member military and security forces. For the third time in two years, the Sandinistas were loudly convinced-or so they said-that U.S. troops were about to invade their soil...
BECAUSE NO CHARACTER in the film can verbalize his thoughts or emotions, the cast relies extensively on token gestures and allusions to convey its message. Sometimes, in the case of the blasting air-raid siren, the allusions are subtle: other times, as in the case of the returning paraplegic soldier from war, the statements are more blunt. In virtually every instance, however, the director weaves this type of commentary skillfully and creatively into the central dance scenes, enabling the film to maintain an artistic symmetry. Even the scenes fraught with tension--potentially sore appendages to an otherwised highly synchronized...