Word: overcasts
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Dates: during 1940-1940
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West from Cleveland, at 6,000 feet, in the bright, clear air just above an alabaster overcast, boomed United Air Lines Trip 21, bound for Chicago with 13 passengers, a crew of three. Over Lansing, Ill. (18 miles southeast of Chicago), handsome Captain Phil Scott, onetime University of Minnesota hockey captain, heard the hum of the Chicago beam in his earphones. By that time it was dark. Passengers and crew had seen the unforgettable sight of the setting sun turning the gleaming white cloud layer to a glory of gold. Now the stars were out, the cloud layer black...
Around 5:30 Phil Scott was told to come on in. He headed north, nosing down through the overcast on instruments...
...Chicago's airport the lights were glowing-white, red, green. Men on the ground saw Trip 21 break out of the overcast, her red and green navigation lights sharp against the ceiling. From the control-tower speaker came Captain Scott's businesslike voice: "Contact-1,500"; i.e., at 1,500 feet he was out of the clouds, could see the ground. The laggard wind had freshened to 9 m.p.h. and Phil Scott had radioed he would come in on the northwest runway. As he made his turn, baggage handlers began wheeling their carts down to the gate where...
...always knew the British fliers were tough babies. . . . But I never fully realized quite how tough they were until the other afternoon when I was out on a British airdrome. There was a low, overcast sky. A plane broke through the clouds. The British anti-aircraft artillery went after it hammer and tongs. It was clear to me that it was a British Spitfire, but it was not clear to them. They shot at it with machine guns until it was on the ground, and continued shooting as it taxied up. The plane taxied up to the line...
...after 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...