Word: merchantman
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Ghosting over the South Atlantic, patrol planes sighted a strange merchant vessel. That night the U.S. destroyer Somers caught up with her, recognized an enemy, opened fire with 5-in. guns. The merchantman's crew began abandoning ship at the first salvo. When the destroyer closed, demolition charges sent the freighter to the bottom...
...gallantry at sea," Mrs. Margaret Hope Maberly Gordon, Australian widow, last week received the British Empire Medal from King George VI. Her gallantry: cast adrift from a torpedoed merchantman in the South Atlantic, she had survived a 52-day ordeal in an open lifeboat. Of 17 in the boat, 15 died...
...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...
...Alazon Bay represented a meeting of two adventurous minds-his and the President's. Only three weeks before, Henry Kaiser had laid on the White House desk the plans for wholesale merchantman-into-carrier conversion. Many an old-fashioned Navy man frowned: slow, small carriers (flight deck: 514 ft.) tote few planes, often must catapult them when there is no strong wind to help. And the pros felt no certainty that the small flat tops, even in droves, would be the answer to the U-boat...
...struck first. Fortresses returned with more 1,000-lb. bombs. Three] minutes later Mitchells roared down to machine-gun the battered, burning ships. Lightning fighters darted at a cloud of Zeros. A new wave of Fortresses came over, low. Flame cloaked a destroyer. A 5,000-ton merchantman burst open. Four others were hit. Low-flying fighters turned lifeboats towed by motor barges, and packed with Jap survivors, into bloody sieves. Loosed on the Japs was the same ferocity which they had often displayed. This time few, if any, Japs in battle green reached shore...