Word: airfield
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Said General MacArthur's tall, lean, sandy-mustached chief engineer, Brigadier General Leif John ("Jack") Sverdrup: "It's marvelous country to raise rice, but damn poor country to raise airfields." Sverdrup had once built an airfield on New Guinea in six days, five hours, 10 minutes. That was impossible on Leyte. But his ingenious engineers cut corners where they could. One airstrip was complete except for 120 feet, under water. They got a plane to race its props and blow off the water, dried the ground with a flamethrower, then hastily put down a hard surface...
...that the Germans were pulling troops out of the city under cover of the long nights and thick weather. Some were left behind, to fight for time. They depressed the muzzles of antiaircraft guns against the attackers, and fired on them with guns from crippled U.S. tanks. On the airfield there was a bitter battle from hangar to hangar, from room to room of the barracks...
...ancient, undistinguished town in Italy's Romagna region, where Benito Mussolini first preached socialism, and only ten miles from where he was born. Last week it became the first important capture in Italy in more than seven weeks. With it into Allied hands passed the first airfield in the northern Italian plain, soon to be cleared of its battle litter of smashed tanks, dead horses...
...born of a desperate need three months ago and built largely from wreckage. Hemmed in by Japs, isolated by monsoon-swept roads, lacking an airfield, Allied soldiers at Mogaung had to make the railroad work-or starve. The rail line had been cut and was under enemy fire at some points; tracks were ripped up and bridges torn down. But there were boxcars, flatcars, and all other essentials except engines, which the Japs were using for machine-gun nests. Simply by switching wheels, G.I. railroadmen created the jeep locomotive and started to roll...
...Japs fought fanatically for the inland town of Pastrana, and U.S. casualties there were heavy. But the Japs, after losing the Leyte Valley and its excellent airfield terrain, streaked for the west coast, began embarking for Cebu in barges and other small craft, under fire from U.S. PT boats. Meanwhile the 21st Infantry, which had landed on A-day at Leyte's southern end, overran the southern third of the island with help from guerrillas. This week Douglas MacArthur announced that two-thirds of Leyte, including 212 miles of north and east coastline, had been liberated...