Word: torpedoes
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...brass band on the stern of the U.S.S. Nevada kept on playing The Star- Spangled Banner for the 8 a.m. flag raising even after a Japanese bomber roared overhead and fired a torpedo at the nearby Arizona. The torpedo missed, but the bomber sprayed machine-gun fire at the Nevada's band and tore up its ensign...
Almost alongside the Oklahoma, another torpedo hurtled through the air. After releasing it, recalled Lieut. Jinichi Goto, commander of the Japanese torpedo bombers, "I saw that I was even lower than the crow's nest of the great battleship. My observer reported a huge waterspout springing up . . . 'Atarimashita! ((It hit!))' he cried...
...What a majestic sight," he said to himself as he counted the vessels lined up in Battleship Row in the dawn's early light. He pulled the trigger on his flare gun. That was supposed to signal the slow-moving torpedo bombers to take advantage of the surprise and strike first. But Fuchida's fighter pilots missed his signal to provide cover, so he fired again for the dive bombers to begin, and then the Japanese all attacked at once. Even when they made mistakes, it seemed that nothing could go wrong...
...techniques of dive-bombing and torpedo bombing were still relatively new, and aerial torpedoes were almost impossible to use in water as shallow as Pearl Harbor. Filching an idea from a recent British torpedo raid against the Italian naval base of Taranto, Genda had technicians create auxiliary wooden tail fins that would keep torpedoes closer to the surface; others converted armor-piercing shells into bombs. But drilling was Fuchida's main task, and all summer his planes staged trial runs over Kagoshima Bay in Kyushu, chosen for its physical resemblance to Pearl. Only in September did Genda tell...
...carrier left, the Hiryu, and one carrier could still sting, fatally. "Bogeys, 32 miles, closing!" cried the Yorktown's radar officer. A dozen fighters from the Yorktown were circling overhead, and more than twice as many antiaircraft guns were firing, when the Hiryu's dive bombers and torpedo bombers struck. As the Yorktown's guns demolished one attacking bomber, its bomb exploded with a huge orange flash behind the carrier's bridge. Then another two bombs penetrated deep below decks, and the carrier's whole bow went up in flames. The Yorktown was doomed (though 2,270 men -- nearly...