Attacked By Luftwaffe Planes
Her second transatlantic voyage took Newell to Bizerte. Two days past Gibraltar, during a twilight alert 20 April 1944, German planes hit the convoy with a torpedo attack. At 21:00, five planes were reported about six miles distant dead ahead. Four minutes later a terrific explosion occurred in the center of the convoy. At the same time three planes came in at about 40 feet above the water, cutting between Newell and USS Lansdale (DD-426). All starboard 20 millimeter guns and the 40 millimeter gun opened fire. Three of the 20s and the 40s were hitting the after plane repeatedly and it swerved off to port and probably exploded, as two German aviators were picked up in this area.
Gun number 3 observed planes coming in aft and opened up, immediately followed by the 40 millimeter gun. The planes were driven off to Newell's port.
Read more about this topic: USS Newell (DE-322)
Famous quotes containing the words attacked by, attacked and/or planes:
“The Word in the desert
Is most attacked by voices of temptation,
The crying shadow in the funeral dance,
The loud lament of the disconsolate chimera.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“The popularity of disaster movies ... expresses a collective perception of a world threatened by irresistible and unforeseen forces which nevertheless are thwarted at the last moment. Their thinly veiled symbolic meaning might be translated thus: We are innocent of wrongdoing. We are attacked by unforeseeable forces come to harm us. We are, thus, innocent even of negligence. Though those forces are insuperable, chance will come to our aid and we shall emerge victorious.”
—David Mamet (b. 1947)
“After the planes unloaded, we fell down
Buried together, unmarried men and women;”
—Robert Lowell (1917–1977)