Word: towers
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Paris' Eiffel Tower is a gaunt, startling skeleton of bare iron bones which hypersensitive esthetes have often called "a horrible thing ... a monster of the imagination." But ever since it was finished in 1889, the 984-foot tower has been jealously adored as a symbol of Paris. It has been visited by 18 millions. It has traveled worldwide by post card, is clearly imprinted on the mind's eye of a large part of the world's population. It has inspired countless little boys playing with sets of Meccano...
...mangy Hawaiian port of Kahului, a Japanese submarine crept closer toward shore in the dusk. A gun crew swarmed from her conning tower and gathered about the deck gun. Kahului, 90 miles by airline from Honolulu on the island of Maul, was going to get its first taste...
After the first stunning shock, the defenders swung into action. Spotters in the Navy Yard signal tower picked up the attackers, flashed air-raid warnings via visual signals. Working coolly under enemy bombs and machine-gun fire and shrapnel from defending anti-aircraft batteries, the signalmen routed scores of orders to ships standing out to sea or fighting from berths...
...battleship captain* had his stomach laid open by a shrapnel burst as he went from conning tower to bridge to direct his ship's fight. He fell to the deck, disdained attempts to lift him to safety, continued to command until the bridge went up in flames. Two officers attempting to save him were themselves saved only after a third officer climbed above the fire, passed a line to an adjoining battleship, another to the trapped men, thus led them to safety...
...moored aircraft tender, blazing under repeated attacks, downed a Japanese plane on her own decks. Simultaneously her captain spotted a midget submarine's shadow within yards of his vessel. Hits were immediately scored and, as the sub's conning tower emerged, a destroyer administered the coup de gráce with depth charges. The tender then shot down a second plane. Motor launches from a vessel laid up for overhaul braved a steady hail of bullets and shrapnel, rescued scores of victims from the oil-fired harbor. Almost without exception officers and men exhibited quick thinking, coolness, coordination...