Word: bonging
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...first ten, Major Walter Carl Beckham is the only other one who fought Germans. His Thunderbolt was downed by flak three weeks after his 18th victory (TIME, March 13). The only other Army man on the list is much-decorated Lockheed Lightning Pilot Captain Richard R. Bong (D.S.C., D.F.C., Silver Star, Air Medal, a cluster of ten Oak Leaf Clusters), whose 21 Jap kills put him in fourth place...
...Bong! into the microphone boomed a 1,700-lb., bronze-plated, ear-jarring bell, borrowed for the duration from a Wichita church-one bong for each B-29 completed during the week. For the past month, Boeing workers, feeling fine about their output, have listened to the bell each Monday, slapped each other's backs. Boeing's Vice President J. E. Schaefer calls the weekly ceremony the "hottest morale booster we ever...
Though he hates suggestions that he is a killer, twenty-two-year-old Dicks Bong has a simple but bloody explanation for his record. "I just get on their tails and blow them out of the sky." A magnificent shot and always eager for action, he has a fighting style all his own - tearing into combat regardless of all risks, spitting more lead than any other pilot stationed at his forward base in New Guinea. Fel low fighters say his probables are more definite than most pilots' certains...
Before he joined the air corps two years ago, Dicks Bong helped his father with oat and potato crops at Poplar, Wis. (pop. 462). His first combat was in the Buna battle of Dec. 27, when he twice rang the bell with a Zero and a dive-bomber. During the smashing of the Lae convoy in early January he nailed three Zeros. He got another in the Bismarck Sea battle...
...eleven fights, only once has he been scared. When the Japs raided Oro Bay last March, Dicks Bong made a pass at a dive-bomber and then realized a Zero had tagged on to him. He headed out to sea to get clear and flip around and meet the Jap head on. "Imagine my surprise when there were nine Zeros instead of one. But it was too late for anything else, so I tore right into them." Bong...