Word: dived
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...over the sea west of Namsos roared a wide swarm of Germany's deadliest aircraft of all; Junkers Ju.87 dive-bombers ("Stukas"), which had not been given a major workout since they pulverized prostrate Poland. These speedy, relatively small single-motored ships have stout wings to pull them out of long, steep power dives at 430 m.p.h. Their crews are specially trained to stand the pressures of such performance. They carry only one 1,100-lb. or two 500-lb. bombs. These they aim by pointing the plane's nose at the target during its screaming dive. Theory...
...death rate among their pilots may be so suicidal that mass dive-bombing will be undertaken only against such targets as last week's Junkers sighted, moving westerly off Norway: a troopship convoy escorted by warships, including "a battleship of the Queen Elizabeth class ... a cruiser of the York class...
...dive-bombers, after separating so that they could descend from different angles, gunned their motors and, each in his turn, started down. From the ships below burst upwards an inverted torrent of anti-aircraft projectiles. . . . Within a few minutes, in Berlin, Hermann Göring was hurrying to tell Adolf Hitler about results which were later flashed to the world in these words...
...hrer Hitler promptly bestowed Knight's Crosses of the Iron Cross upon Generals Milch and Geisler and upon Major Harlinghausen, an active pilot and squadron leader, who presumably had crowned his career by leading the dive-bombers down upon the battleship. An extended version of the official German story, which was withheld for 24 hours "to see whether Churchill will have the courage to admit this terrific loss," added the following items to the alleged action...
...Nazi press yowled triumphantly over this sensational finale to Germany's conquest of Norway. This yowling revealed that the dive-bombing attack, and its stunning "result," were intended for the special benefit of Italy, into whose neighborhood an Allied fleet had moved in admonition against Mussolini's entering Hitler's war. Italy is long on bombing planes, not so long on battleships...