Word: dive
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Guam, Too. Douglas and Curtiss dive-bombers roared out of the predawn to smack the twin, 15-mile-long islands of Saipan and Tinian, while Grumman Hellcats provided cover and strafing. Later in the day a second strike was launched on schedule. A smaller delegation of Navy pilots bombed U.S.-owned Guam, 85 miles farther south, for the first time since the Japs seized it in December...
Japan's lush and formidable South Seas base was suddenly fixed in hundreds of U.S. airmen's bombsights. Carrier planes -Avengers and Dauntless dive-bombers -hurtled across the green islands which lie within Truk's barrier coral reef, screamed down onto the shipping moored inside the 40-mile-wide lagoon. Snub-nosed Hellcats swirled into fights with Jap defenders, shot them from the air, caught plenty more ignominiously on the ground. After the first few hours there was no longer any doubt: the enemy had been caught napping...
...last jobs in the Mediterranean was to serve as a beacon for the landing in Sicily. We had, as a kind of escort, a PC-boat. The Germans started to dive-bomb us, and old PC turned out to be a very enthusiastic man with his guns. He put up a very fine barrage...
Hours too late, the German Command recovered: 18 dive-bombers came over to attack the invasion ships. But the beachhead was already secure, Allied patrols were halfway to Rome, tanks and Bren gun carriers were ashore, Allied airmen controlled the skies. If the Germans planned a strong counterattack, no hint of it had come in the first, crucial 48 hours. Instead, Berlin reported new Allied landings at Gaeta and Terracina, just behind the German defense lines...
What Price? The bombermen who saw the beginning of the combat lost sight of the Mustang in a dive. It seemed little better than a 1-in-100 chance that such gallantry could have survived such odds. But Eighth Air Force intelligence officers found that the odds had been cheated. Last week they identified the Mustang pilot as Major James H. Howard, of St. Louis. What was more, Major Howard had landed at his British base unscratched; even his ship had emerged from the maelstrom of Messerschmitts with nothing worse than one bullet hole in the wing...