Word: flak
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Fifth & Main. The Far East Air Forces' lumbering, obsolescent B-29 bombers have been forced to do most of their work at night. There have never been enough Sabres to give the bombers a good day time screen, and the combination of flak and MIGs caused heavy proportionate losses. There are not many strategic targets in North Korea, and the Reds seem to know just when & where the U.S. bombers are going to strike. Says Brigadier General Joe Kelly, the B-29 commander: "The war we're fighting now is one in which we say to them...
...strike at the Red airstrip under construction at Taechon, 45 miles south of the Yalu. U.N. escort fighters were able to beat off Russian-built MIG interceptors, and the only loss-one of nine bombers attacking-was to flak. The pilot nursed the crippled 6-29 out over the Yellow Sea, where Lieut. Donald A. Birch used his precision bombsight to aim parachuting fellow crewmen at a tiny island. Twelve were rescued...
...extreme northeastern Korea one day last week and dropped 300 tons on the important communications town of Rashin, which lies on the rail line from Manchuria's Harbin down Korea's east coast. The bombers smashed warehouses, a locomotive repair shop, a marshaling yard. There was no flak and no enemy interception. It would have been a routine raid if it were not for Rashin's peculiar history...
...Force announced last week that 308 of its planes had been lost in the war-a jump of 96 planes in one month (the figures do not include carrier-based Navy and Marine planes). Allied airmen have lately been suffering heavily from enemy flak, some of which is radar-controlled and skillfully handled. Americans strafing at low levels have been hit and sometimes forced down by a variety of missiles, including rifle and burp-gun bullets and grenades. In one low-altitude flight last week, an F80 pilot, returning to base, found the explanation for a jar he had felt...
While the fast jets flew top cover, to ward off enemy air interference, the F-80s attacked the Sinuiju ack-ack positions and put most of them out of business. (The Americans could do nothing, however, about flak from across the river.) With bombs, rockets, machine guns and napalm, the "props" (propeller-driven planes) smashed field installations, set barracks afire. Only 15 planes were claimed as destroyed on the ground, but Lieut. General Earle Partridge of the Fifth Air Force said: "I am sure this attack has reduced considerably their immediate capability of striking at U.N. forces from Korean bases...