Word: dive
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Georgia group. Wickham Anchorage lies hidden behind a long, narrow, palmy, hook-shaped island. It is only 120 miles from the main Jap positions on Guadal. Though the approaches are tricky, good-sized vessels can hide there. Last week a group of Jap cargo ships did. U.S. dive-bombers found them and in two attacks sank four. They also found quite a few landing barges by which the Japs sneak-land and sank five. At week's end SBDs sank two destroyers off the New Georgia group - which may have been headed for either Munda or Wickham...
PB2Y (patrol plane) may now be officially spoken of as the Coronado, the P-40F (fighter) the Warhawk, the SBD (dive-bomber) the Dauntless. But it was still hard to visualize a dusty, sweaty operations officer telling a pilot to "get in that Skymaster and take some food up to the boys at Buna." (Skymaster-C-54 four-engined transport...
Over his ship's speaker system, Oct. 26, Captain Gatch asked his men if they were ready. Bulkheads rattled the shout of 2,000 men: "Aye, aye, sir!" The first attack lasted eight minutes. The enemy threw in 20 dive-bombers. The battleship spoke with all its voices: the huge grump-grump of 5-inch all-purpose secondary batteries, the more frenetic chattering of smaller pieces...
Half an hour later 40 torpedo planes and dive-bombers swooped in. Only one plane got through, a torpedo bomber. It was just taking the attitude for its drop when shells clipped its wings. It flipped up and shot the torpedo high in the air, right across the fantail and into the sea on the opposite side of the stern...
After noon the stubborn ones came again -24 dive-bombers and torpedo planes. This time at least one attacker made good. He dropped a 500-pounder on one of the forward turrets. Captain Gatch, who was standing on the bridge's exposed catwalk, took a fragment of bomb in his neck. An artery was cut. His shoulder was torn. He was knocked out. But his ship got through...