Word: flak
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...plunged out of the plane door happy to be leaving a ship that was heading toward flak and more Germans. The jump was from such low altitude there was only a moment to look around in the moonlight after my chute opened. The fields looked so small that one couldn't miss a tree or hedge. Anyway I couldn...
...Liberator, Sweating it Out, was doing just that. Over the European target it had taken such a beating from flak that its bombs jammed and would not drop. Now it was limping home, crossing the Channel, with all four engines damaged and the hydraulic system shot to bits...
Quiet Type. But Mild & Bitter had no record of hair-raising escapes. Her saga was one of good luck and almost monotonous efficiency. She had lugged 166 different airmen to battle; 26 were decorated, but not one got a Purple Heart. During her robust career she acquired some 50 flak holes, but never any damage that Bill Stuart and his ground crew could not repair overnight...
Crew Chief Stuart (who named the plane after hearing Englishmen ordering their pints of mild & bitter in a local pub) tried hard to think of something spectacular that had happened to the ship. On one raid, it is true, a burst of flak fountained up right through the open bomb bay. Hot steel fragments rattled against cold steel bombs with a hellish din. But nothing happened...
...Medal," said Staff Sergeant Edward Cooper, who described the attack as "epic, colossal, historymaking. It is the only one in recent months not made by mighty swarms of four-engined bombers. We failed to shoot down 120 enemy planes. We did not obliterate the target, and despite flak which was not thick enough to walk on, we did not start fires visible for 80 miles...