Word: redness
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...clear day last week, a U.S. Navy P4M Mercator patrol plane lumbered along at 7,000 ft. above the Sea of Japan, 55 nautical miles east of the North Korean coast. A few minutes after noon, Tail Gunner Donald E. Corder, 20, aviation electrician's mate, spotted two red-starred MIGs, already boring down in a gunnery run on the Mercator. Their guns began to spit bullets. "They're firing at us," he shouted into the intercom. Lieut. Commander Donald Mayer, 35, barked a fireback order. But cross-conversation blocked the intercom, and the command came too late...
Lame and defenseless, the 395-m.p.h., four-engined Mercator (curiously designed, with two turbojets and two piston engines) was a sitting duck. The 670-m.p.h. Red jets swooped down in six passes altogether, scored 15 to 20 damaging hits, knocked out both starboard engines, and left the rudder usable only by its trim tabs. While Plane Commander Mayer kept a lookout, Lieut. Commander Vincent Joseph Anania, 39, the copilot at the controls, put the plane into a steep, top-speed dive and leveled out just 50 ft. above the sea. The MIGs broke off. Mayer ordered all movable equipment dumped...
...Reason. Navy Chief Arleigh Burke grabbed a radio telephone to Admiral Withington in Tokyo and learned the embarrassing truth: the Mercator lacked no parts. Its nose and top guns had been dismantled to make room for top-secret radar and infra-red gear, used in mapping and aerial photography. And the damaged Mercator was returning from a reconnaissance mission along the North Korean coast when it was fired upon...
There was no reason for the Navy to be red-faced about the truth. The mission was perfectly legal; electronics-crammed planes patrol regularly outside the Communist-claimed twelve-mile limit. Their missions are essential; it is the prime duty of U.S. forces to keep track of the relentless Communist buildup at key Asian jumping-off points. The Mercator's flight was part of the hazardous duty that crewmen long ago came to accept as normal in the Asian aerial no man's land. Since the Korean armistice of 1953, Communist and U.S. planes have exchanged fire...
Much tidying up yet remains. To this day, parts of Canada still fly the British Union Jack, although the government is trying during the pageantry of the Queen's visit to spread the use of the Red Ensign, with its hard-to-discern Canadian shield. Canadians are unable to decide on a national anthem, and sing either God Save the Queen or O Canada...