Word: daylight
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Luftwaffe on the Defensive. The Germans have devised new tactics to get at the heavily armed daylight bombers. As part of its general swing to the defensive, Germany has shifted the preponderance of its plane production from bombers to fighters. Of the Nazi planes now stationed in western Europe (about one-third of the entire Nazi air force) at least 60% are fighters. They combine mass, smothering attack with concentrations on single planes and stragglers, and they have figured out approaches which to some extent nullify the fire of the bombers' guns. The Flying Fortresses can take...
...this means a kind of hell for the bomber crews which the bare loss figures do not convey: old friends suddenly gone from the Red Cross snack bars, destruction and blood and death in many of the planes which limp home. It definitely does not mean that U.S. daylight bombing is to be abandoned or diminished, but it does mean that the price of such bombing must be high until the Eighth Air Force finds an answer to the Nazi fighter system...
...landed beside a mountain ledge, lit a cigaret in the dark, flicked the burnt butt on the ground beside him. He looked down and saw the butt dropping hundreds of feet below him into what seemed a bottom less void. He didn't move another foot until daylight. Crouch hit the ground about 20 miles from a Chinese field where the flight was heading. Fitzhugh's ship landed safely in a rice paddy and the crew fired it. They could see lanterns, hear voices of Chinese peasants who were too terrified to approach. It was raining sheets...
...daylight raid on Bremen, American losses were also high-16 bombers. The percentage was not announced, but up to last week no more than 133 American bombers had ever been over any one target in Europe. A few London correspondents noted that the U.S. Air Forces in Britain were training their daylight crews in night flying, deduced that daylight bombing was to be abandoned or subordinated to night bombing...
...fact: Army airmen are more than ever convinced that daylight, precision bombing is worth while, plan to intensify the day raids with more and bigger bombers. The crews are brushing up on flying in the dark so that they can approach their targets in early dawn or leave them just at dusk. American crews thus can keep the advantages of bombing in daylight, have darkness to shield them from enemy fighters during half the round trip...