Word: messerschmitts
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...when the Junkers JU52 bombers of the Luftwaffe's Condor Legion arrived. For three hours high-explosive and incendiary devices fell on the town, whose narrow streets were packed with villagers and peasants from the surrounding countryside. Those who managed to flee the firestorm were hunted and strafed by Messerschmitt and Fiat fighter planes. A third of the town's 5,000 residents were killed, mostly children and old people; perhaps another thousand visitors died. Far from the front lines of the Spanish Civil War, which had begun the previous July, the town had no military importance. Its bombing...