Word: targeted
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Bombs Away. At 11:13 a.m. the first bomb bay opened. Chief target was the immense railroad marshaling yard about four miles from St. Peter's, two miles from the Forum, one and a half miles from the Fascist Government offices. The Allied communique understated: "The marshaling yard ... is of greatest importance to the Axis war effort, and in particular for the movement of German troops." The smashing of Rome's central rail terminal would mean the smashing of Italy's main north-south communications, would go a long way toward paralyzing reinforcement of southern Italy...
They found their target in the evening. "Four heavy cruisers steamed abeam in the center of the force. Three . . . light cruisers were aft of them and three forward. ... Six destroyers champed and pawed around them in, a rough, diamond-shaped formation, so that whichever way a plane came in there would be hoofs in its face...
...nearest big one," said Swede Larsen over the radio, and these "were the only words uttered by anybody during the whole attack." Northwest of the target hung a purple curl of cloud. Torpedo-planes sheltering in it would have a vital 20 seconds' protection from the Jap gun ners before emerging on the very nose of the target...
...eyes, thought Swede, must be watching from the decks below, ten thousand minds trying to estimate what he and his mates would do. "And there the torpedo pilot sits, throwing his plane around with both hands and both feet, his eyes flitting from enemy plane to enemy ships to target to waves to altimeter to speedometer, his brain racing through the arithmetic of destruction and the arithmetic of conservation . . . and with all his reflexes working at once, thrusting past, around, and through each other, like the notes of some terrible symphony . . . that he must conduct . . . with utter flawlessness, knowing well...
Naples, the Italian port and arms center 190 miles north of Sicily, was such a target, because from Naples flowed much Axis traffic to Sicily. Last week Fortresses and Wellingtons from Doolittle's command laid a belt of flame across Naples' docks, torpedo factory, arsenal and railway yards. In one series of attacks the Wellingtons struck by night, the Fortresses by day. In another and greater raid, ripped the heart of Naples...