Word: sirening
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...half an hour before lunchtime when the first siren screamed; about noon practically the whole Mitchel air fleet was aloft: medium Martin bombers (with machine guns, but no bombs in their racks), mean-looking, olive-drab...
Back in the '20s, when he was captain in command of the battleship Mississippi, Tommy Hart was just as independent as he is today. Once, while leading eleven other battleships in a pea-soup fog, he heard a destroyer's warning siren, somewhere off his bow. Promptly, without consulting his fleet commander, he ordered the line to stop. Hauled up on the carpet for breach of regulations, he exploded: "If I couldn't see, how the hell could the flagship at the end of the line?" He was officially rebuked, unofficially applauded...
...terrible roar as the warhead bit through the Kearny's armor. The explosion killed seven men stationed in the forward boiler room on the steaming watch. Its force ripped up through the deck, wrecked the starboard wing of the bridge, knocked the forward stack back and broke the siren cord so that its shrill yowl could not be shut off. Four others disappeared, probably blown overboard...
...couldn't hear a damned thing on the bridge because of the siren. We looked over the side to see whether the engines were still turning over or whether she was settling. It was a matter of minutes before she started to move forward." The explosion broke the bridge's control of the engine room and steering apparatus, "but pretty soon we were able to steer from the second conning station. . . . We had no compass working and the helmsman steered by the flag-that is, he watched the flag to see which way the wind was blowing." Ensign...
Because Dover still gets eight to ten siren warnings daily, the first lesson in 18 months was an air-raid drill: Teacher cried "Get in the cave," and pupils grabbed gas masks, cleared out in 30 seconds. At the second lesson they learned to dive under desks at the word "Shell...