Word: dive
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...tactical air force operating against enemy armed forces, and particularly against the Luftwaffe, had such a week as made the Allied pilots gloat. Said Lieut. Colonel Graham West, describing the destruction of German dive bombers: "It was just the kind of thing every one of our flyers dreamed about but never believed would come-a chance to really tear into a bunch of Stukas and give them the works...
Convinced that the Stuka had been a nuisance rather than a menace through most of the great desert campaign, the R.A.F. reiterated one of its favorite tactical doctrines: not only the Stuka but the dive-bomber itself was obsolete...
American airmen heard this pronouncement with the respect due the most thoroughly experienced air force in the world. But they did not agree. Dive-bombing, conceived and brought to its highest perfection by the U.S. Navy, is still thoroughly alive in the U.S. forces. In the Pacific, the Douglas Dauntless (SBD) is still the most effective aerial weapon in the fleet, has done more damage than torpedo planes. Result of its showing: the Army Air Forces is now gladly taking instruction from Navy airmen on dive-bombing technique, and has taken up the SBD, which the Air Forces call...
Chief reasons for the good showing were a 91% jump in railroad net, sharply higher profits for airlines, amusement companies, hotels. Even manufacturing profits held up well. Thanks to a good final six months, total earnings eased only 13.8% for the year as compared to a 36.7% nose dive at midyear...
...have walked [into Britain] and helped himself." His vital air power, thinks Michaelis, would simply have been defeated "two months sooner." The German bombers, "with their oldfashioned, manhandled gun mountings, were insufficiently armed to protect themselves." Their escorting Messerschmitts, designed according to German fighter tradition for "a very fast dive, snap shoot, and away," were not built to "stay and fight a delaying action while the bombers got through." The price paid by the Germans in the decisive 84 days of the Battle of Britain was 2,375 aircraft definitely destroyed, and the loss of 7,000 trained pilots...