Word: bomber
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...before this crisis, slim, restless Major General Hoyt Sanford Vandenberg, commander of the U.S. Ninth Air Force, had popped into the headquarters of 40-year-old Major General Elwood Ricardo Quesada, head of one of the Ninth's chief components-the IX Tactical Air Command, whose fighter bombers were stationed back of the First Army. "Van" Vandenberg and "Pete" Quesada went over reports, decided that this was the real thing. The immediate task was to muster every fighter bomber into attacks, to impede Rundstedt's armored spearheads. Generals Van and Pete faced hard facts: 1) at many places...
Starved of gasoline and everything else that an air force needs, because it all had to be flown over the Hump, the 20th Bomber Command in China and India had run up, by year's end, a tally of 23 assaults on Japan and Jap arsenals in Asia. The bombs dropped totaled about 5,000 tons-no more than a single major R.A.F. strike over Europe's shorter hauls. But in those tentative stabs, the Superfort flyers had learned to know their planes-and the Japs' defenses...
Good and Not So Good. The 21st Bomber Command, at Saipan, had started later and gained faster. In its first month of operations, beginning Nov. 24, it had dropped more than 1,500 tons on Honshu, concentrating on aircraft factories around Tokyo and Nagoya. The Japs had new interceptors of improved types (known as Jack and Irving). U.S. airmen did not underrate the threat of these planes; the factories building them were top-priority targets. The Nakajima Company's great Musashina factory on Tokyo's outskirts was hit three times before year's end. Said the 21st...
...coordinate #11 strategic bomber blows in the Orient, lean, affable Lieut. General Millard F. Harmon was doubling in brass as deputy commander of the worldwide Twentieth Air Force and as commander, Strategic Air Forces, Pacific Ocean Areas. For the present, he had to use his 6-243 (and occasionally some of his precious 6-295) to keep hammering at Sulphur Island (Iwo Jima) in the Volcano group, whence Jap fighters took off to harry 6-295 bombing Honshu, and whence Jap bombers took off to bomb the Superfort base at Saipan.* Later, when bases nearer to Japan had been...
Honors and Fogies. Out of 40 outmoded TBDs which had taken off from U.S. carriers that day, only four came back. Smitty's battered bomber was one of them. Mom got her picture. Smitty got 1) a commission as ensign; 2) a Navy Cross and a citation which read in part: "His extreme disregard of personal safety contributed materially to the success of our forces...