Word: airfield
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After World War II, Albert C. Prendergast, a heavy-bomber pilot, went back to Dallas, to his insurance business and to his garden (he could make anything grow, his wife said). But on weekends, and whenever else he could, he headed for the airfield, flew long hours with a Dallas Air National Guard unit. When friends kidded him about being a weekend warrior, Prendergast, 34, would turn serious and say: "Weekend warriors are good fighting men and good citizens...
Observers found other shortcomings in the performance of U.S. forces. Camouflage was sloppy, communication lines inadequate. Air strikes were too few, and too slow to attack when called. On the Rhein-Main Airfield observers saw cargo planes parked so close that they made inviting targets. Traffic moved placidly in daylight along the Frankfurt-Darmstadt autobahn while, just off the road, supply trucks piled up outside the Sunset...
Such a plane, shooting most of its deadly radiation unhindered into the air, will be dangerous on an airfield. When its reactor is running, all men in the vicinity will have to take cover, and the radioactive blasts roaring out of its tailpipes may poison the area permanently. To reduce these hazards, the atom-plane may have to take off with rockets, starting its nuclear engines only when safely up and away. In spite of such precautions it will not be a pleasant airport-mate. Once its reactors have run for a while, they will be radioactive even when shut...
Zero at Last. As each move is made by working the proper switches, the computing mechanism figures mathematically just how much damage has been done to the enemy's air power. A smashed airfield, for instance, weakens him at once, but the damage is soon repaired. When a factory is blasted, the effect is not felt for a while, but it lasts much longer. The side that has lost its defensive fighter bases is penalized by heavier losses when enemy bombers strike. By well-planned moves a skillful team can reduce its opponent to near-helplessness long before...
Embry got into Spain all right-curled up in the tail compartment of a British agent's car. Meanwhile, in matted beard and filthy clothes, he had witnessed the Germans' triumphal entry into Paris, carefully studied the layout of a strategic airfield, and spent at least one comfortable night cheekily sleeping in the bed of an absent German general. Like most men who escaped through Occupied France, he speaks almost with awe of the peasants and plain folk who unhesitatingly risked their lives to help...