Word: deck
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...World War II's new third dimension, the air, the Iowa and ships like her are vulnerable. A heavy bomb can only dent her deck, but a lucky hit down a funnel into the magazine might do for her. High-altitude precision bombing could be crippling if delivered in a pattern so that the Iowa's speed and maneuverability couldn't save her. More damaging would be close-in, suicidal plane attack-and even with her announced 20-gun, 5-inch secondary battery, sixteen 1.1-inch anti-aircraft guns and unannounced small-caliber armament, the Iowa alone...
...Soon night closed down over the unruffled sea and the third officer spotted lights about three miles away. Swiftly the lights grew closer to starboard. At three-quarters of a mile the approaching ship opened fire. Shells from 8-in. guns tore into the cargo vessel, quickly putting its deck guns out of action. Torpedoes from the deck tubes of the attacker plowed through the sea. On the victim's port side, tracer bullets slashed the darkness...
Bucking a heavy head wind, the winning crew, rowing the course in three minutes and forty-five seconds, nosed out Cunningham's lightweight boat by a deck length in what was probably the most exciting race of the term. With a tail wind favoring the 150-lb. boat, the story might have been different...
From Reuter's Correspondent Norman Thorpe came an eyewitness account of her destruction. Thorpe was aboard. "Violent explosions" sent him rushing to the quarterdeck. As the Eagle heeled over, "six-inch shells, each weighing 100 lb., tore loose from their brackets and bumped down the clifflike deck." Seamen flung themselves overboard to escape the runaway shells. Thorpe himself slid down a rope into the thick, oil-coated sea, let go, realized with horror that he had not blown enough air into his lifebelt. He thrashed his way to a cork float...
Because they were young, they liked to fly. Because they liked to fly, they joined the Navy's air arm. On a carrier in the Pacific, these 15 pilots from different home towns were lined up on deck one day as a team-Navy torpedo Squadron No. 8. Grinning and a little selfconscious, they submitted to the good old American custom of having their team picture taken...