Word: horizon
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Late in the morning a plane came boring in from the horizon-single-engined, stubby-winged, deep-bellied where the depth bombs lay: a U.S. TBF Avenger...
This was something new to convoy crews, a single-engined land plane so far out to sea. It could mean only that a carrier was in the vicinity. But carrier escort, too, was unusual for an ordinary convoy. Hours later the crew spotted the answer: up over the horizon came a "baby flattop," a carrier converted from a merchantman, escorted by several old four-stacker destroyers. By blinker light the little carrier reported...
There it was: a pin point flickering on the dark, unmarked horizon. The lookout grinned with satisfaction: the real thing looked exactly like the flashes he had been taught to see in Night Lookout School, back at Base, in New London...
Behind them, the "stage electrician" manipulated his switchboard. He could simulate every effect they might see on a war patrol: dawn, eastern horizon (the thin line of light which justifies the phrase "crack of dawn"); dawn, western horizon (an upper glow, quite different); fire at sea (a glow unmistakable once seen); thunder showers far off; gunfire ("Here's a cruiser coming at you," explained the CPO instructor, and the class watched the tiny, stabbing flashes grow brighter...
...horizon the instructor placed a scale model of a Jap ship. Black ship on black sea. Gradually the electrician turned on the dawn effect. To a landsman all was still dark, but one of the lookouts sang: "Ship! Bearing zero zero five." The black ship took faint shape as the light increased almost imperceptibly. "I think it's a carrier." It was. The artificial night was still black enough to make a cat stumble, but the lookout called the class and course of the enemy warcraft...