Block · one region of the page, as the scanner read it. It may hold a whole story, part of one, several, or an advertisement; stitching blocks into articles is the next step. Text is supplied OCR.
Page 5 · column 2 of 6 · from the scan, no model involved
They cut a Japanese
plane in half, and it
crashed off the bow.
The men of the Crew
paused briefly to
shake hands, then
continued their
defense of the
harbor.
ady to fire. Mr. Pond was the only gun crew member aboard that morning, so he gave the others a 15-second lesson in how to operate the gun.
They discovered there wasn’t any ammo, and the stock was secured and locked. Someone came up with 36-inch bolt cutters, and the gun was ready to be fired.
Mr. Pond recalls that there were “a million” dive bombers and torpedo bombers in the sky, and their tail gunners would let go with a burst of machine gun fire at the crew of the Chew.
Amazingly, at 8:03 a.m. the makeshift gun crew let loose their first round, and with no officers around—they were ashore—the sailors were on their own against a sky full of enemy planes.
They cut a Japanese plane in half, and it crashed off the bow. The men of the Crew paused briefly to shake hands, then continued their defense of the harbor. By 10:20 a.m. they were under way, and could claim 2Vz Japanese planes to their credit. The enemy had sent 363 planes into Pearl that day, and lost only 29.
Mr. Pond says it wasn’t until later that night that it sunk in: the United States had lost its Pacific
92.4%