Word: antiaircraft
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...Coventry, it was London's turn again and the most massive night at 20 tack yet launched upon the capital poured down another five or six hundred tons of death. Only a providential overcast prevented this happening to London two nights in a row. Although London's antiaircraft defense is far heavier than any other British city's, Luftwaffe was apparently ordered and geared to shoot the works...
...night last week dozens of British warplanes droned over Switzerland on their way to bomb northern Italy. Antiaircraft batteries opened fire and the Swiss High Command claimed to have dispersed one squadron. Next day the Government made a second energetic, but futile, protest to London. The High Command took more effective action, ordered the entire country blacked out from 10 o'clock every night until dawn. The Swiss explained that instead of compelling respect for their neutrality, normal lighting had guided pilots on their...
...pilots said that even the typhoons he had experienced in the Pacific Islands came nowhere near it. Every cloud flamed with bright amber color and we could see the bursts of the naval salvos in the docks. . . . The searchlights went quite drunk, waving aimlessly about the sky. The antiaircraft guns continued firing, but goodness knows at what. There was complete chaos down below...
Civilians lost sleep and work. Each night from 10 p.m. until dawn the noise of bombs and "ack ack" (signaling lingo for A. A. - antiaircraft) was almost unbearable, though the defense barrage was comforting. It was also expensive - ?250,000 nightly - and brought down only 3% to 5% of bagged planes. The siren was a nerve-tearing noise. Dr. Henry Albert Wilson, Bishop of Chelmsford, was dead in earnest when he wrote: "I suggest a gay cockadoodle-doo repeated half a dozen times would be in the nature of a whistle to keep our courage up instead of a dole...
...desperation. Such heavy fire could not be long maintained. The average anti-aircraft gun of the 3.7-and 4.5-inch types used by Britain can fire about 300 rounds, then it must be dismantled and its liner shrunk, removed, replaced. London could not possibly muster more than 5,000 antiaircraft guns (including machine guns), and if the 400,000 rounds claimed in one night were actually fired, the Tommies were shooting the guts out of their guns. Neutral observers thought the slackening of German attack in the face of this barrage was coincidence...