Word: fuchida
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Fuchida's bombers neared Oahu, the defenders of Pearl Harbor got the last of their many warnings. Just outside the harbor, the U.S. destroyer Ward spotted an intruding submarine at 6:30 a.m. and opened fire from 50 yds. away. As the sub began diving, the Ward finished it off with depth charges. Lieut. William Outerbridge's report of his action was still ricocheting around headquarters when Fuchida arrived overhead...
...sight," he said to himself as he counted the vessels lined up in Battleship Row in the dawn's early light. He pulled the trigger on his flare gun. That was supposed to signal the slow-moving torpedo bombers to take advantage of the surprise and strike first. But Fuchida's fighter pilots missed his signal to provide cover, so he fired again for the dive bombers to begin, and then the Japanese all attacked at once. Even when they made mistakes, it seemed that nothing could go wrong...
Within minutes, Pearl Harbor was pandemonium: explosions, screams, tearing steel, the rattle of machine guns, smoke, fire, bugles sounding, the whine of diving airplanes, more explosions, more screams. With Battleship Row afire, Fuchida's bombers circled over the maze of Pearl Harbor's docks and piers, striking again and again at the cruisers and destroyers and supply ships harbored there...
Down on Battleship Row, Fuchida's bombers kept pounding the helpless battlewagons. The West Virginia took six torpedoes, then two bombs. One large piece of shrapnel smashed into the starboard side of the bridge and tore open the stomach of the skipper, Captain Mervyn Bennion. A medic patched up the dying man's wound, and a husky black mess steward, Doris Miller, who had once boxed as the ship's heavyweight champion, helped move the stricken captain to a sheltered spot...
...Fuchida's surprise attack lasted only about half an hour. Then, after a short lull, a second wave of 171 more planes roared in. By now the Americans were on the alert and firing at anything in sight. Twenty planes flying in from maneuvers with the Enterprise came under heavy American fire; two were shot down...