ARMY & NAVY
On Feb. 21, 1945, the veteran Saratoga finally got it. Last week the Navy told how.
For more than three years the Navy's biggest,*oldest carrier had fought through the Pacific war, taken two submarine torpedoes but never a hit from an enemy aircraft. On that February afternoon, as she was launching her own planes off Iwo Jima, nine Jap planes closed on her.
Five got through her fighter cover and her wildly crackling antiaircraft fire. Four of them smashed into her. The fifth plane, knocked into the sea, freakishly bounced into her side and exploded, rupturing her skin near the...