Helping to Hold the Line

Again and again the big 5-in. naval guns roared with the sound of 70-lb. shells being dispatched toward shore. Steaming to within two miles of the Lebanese coast, the U.S. destroyer John Rodgers and the nuclear-powered cruiser Virginia, part of an American flotilla that had grown to more than a dozen vessels with the arrival of the battleship New Jersey late last week, hurled some 600 rounds into the wooded hills above Beirut. For residents of the Lebanese capital, the shells zooming overhead produced a piercing whistle...