Word: biak
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...other side of the world, Japan felt the weight of U.S. power as a big naval task force struck by sea & air into the Marianas Islands, while heavy bombers from the South Pacific area attacked enemy bases in the Carolines. On Biak Island, a long step back toward the conquered Philippines, U.S. troops captured one key airfield, were pressing the Japs back...
...Secretary Stimson announced that the Army has 3,657,000 overseas, of its total strength of 7,700,000. These men are on every continent and hundreds of islands from Iceland to Biak. (Peak A.E.F. strength in World War I was 2,057,675.) To nourish this great force supply lines stretch more than 56,000 miles, to every continent. Some 1,150,000 of the Army's troops outside the U.S. are in the Air Forces...
...powerful, seasoned invasion team -Army, Navy and Air - swung along the north coast of New Guinea, pounced on Biak, a large island only 300 miles from New Guinea's western tip. Once taken - a job at which the task force was bloodily busy this week - Biak would be a real strategic asset to the U.S. in its drive into Japan's inner defenses...
...Biak has three airfields. It is less than 900 miles from Davao on the southern tip of the Philippines, about 500 miles from Palau, the Jap naval base in the western Carolines...
According to Plan. The first step - -the beachhead - of the "final stage" went off smoothly. At Biak, largest of the is lands in the Schouten group, it was clear dawn. Offshore, the invasion task force under Rear Admiral William M. Fechteler hove to before the rock-pointed sandy beach at the southeastern heel of the island. From cruisers and destroyers poured a 19-minute barrage...