A description of anti-aircraft fire in World War II

     Down upon the Enterprise fell rivulets of dive-bombers, the Vals peeling off and dropping as if following a spout, down and down, one following the other every few seconds, through dense hanging fields of black smoke stains from the flack. "First ones spotted were just on our port bow, diving in," wrote Lloyd Mustain of the Atlanta. "The sky was just a solid sheet of tracers and shell bursts - impossible to tell your own. Reaching the release point, the planes let go their explosives, then pulled out or failed to pull out and plunged into the sea.
     The blasts of the five-inch guns on the collected ships of the task force had risen in seconds from a scattered staccato to the roll of heavy timpani. "Men on other ships said the Atlanta seemed to burst into flame from bow to fantail and from mast tip to water line," Edward Corboy wrote. She rode off the Enterprise's starboard bow. Each turret in the antiaircraft cruiser's main battery could put out a two-gun salvo every four seconds; fifteen salvos and thirty shells a minute, with eight turrets so engaged.
     (From Neptune's Inferno, by James D. Hornfischer)



U. S. S. Atlanta