Word: bourget
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...incendiaries. Returning pilots reported the Germans using Dornier-217 bombers as night fighters, indicating the Nazi shortage of fighter aircraft. Pesky Mosquito bombers flying at 400 m.p.h. gave Berlin its 68th and 69th aerial pastings of the war. This week allied planes hit again at Paris' Le Bourget, six other French fields...
Heavy bombers of the U.S. Eighth Air Force celebrated Bastille Day with smashing daylight raids on German air installations at Villacoublay, Amiens and famed Le Bourget airport (where Lindbergh landed) near Paris. TIME Correspondent William Walton covered the Le Bourget raid from the transparent nose of the Flying Fortress Georgia Peach, jammed in with Navigator B. L. Otto ("Blotto") and Bombardier Johnny Ozier. His report follows...
...first time I saw Paris my knees shook like aspens. Ahead of the Georgia Peach, bursting flak made black puffballs in the early morning sunlight. Focke-Wulfs and Messerschmitts dived and rolled, spitting lead at the formation of heavy bombers droning steadily toward Le Bourget. The Forts, in high-stacked formation at about 20,000 feet, spurted streams of tracers and explosives back into the fighters. The Bastille Day air battle gave the French another chapter of memories on their historic anniversary...
...time to watch France pass below us. As I glanced out now, there was Paris, a pale gold pattern in the clear morning light, the Eiffel Tower, the Champs Elysées, the Seine glinting silver. Flak seemed to be mushrooming up from nowhere. In a moment Le Bourget was in sight. Johnny started fiddling with the release. As Johnny quietly said: "Bombs away," a cluster dropped from the Fortress close beside us. The Forts moved too fast for us to see the bombs hit, but photographs we saw later showed that they had smashed a row of hangars...
Twelve days had passed since British bombers tore the German night, ten since U.S. bombers flew in sunlight to Le Bourget (see cols, 1 & 2). Bad weather, the one defense which works against an air offensive, had given both the Germans and the Allied bombing fleets a valuable respite...