Word: biak
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Dates: during 1944-1944
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South of the Philippines, U.S. troops picked up another small parcel of Pacific real estate, this time the tiny Mapia Islands off Dutch New Guinea. Presumably they were taken as flank protection for the U.S. air base on Biak. Meanwhile U.S. Liberator bombers flew 800 miles to bomb the important Japanese naval base at Brunei Bay on the far side of Borneo, scoring five hits on a battleship, four on a cruiser. Both ships, presumably cripples or survivors of last month's naval battle, were left blazing...
From then on, the pattern was so consistent that even the beleagured Jap commanding the Second Army should have been able to figure it out: Wakde Island-on May 17; Biak on May 27; Noemfoor on July 2. But the Jap apparently persisted in the conviction that MacArthur's next move would be against Second Army headquarters at Manokwari...
...Guam, in process of liberation; Tinian under invasion. From these points, U.S. land-based bombers could bring the whole sea under their bombsights. The sea's western reaches were in the range of B245 and 6-295, operating from China; its southern reaches could be covered from the Biak-Noemfoor area off New Guinea. These ranges fanned out and overlapped. The islands studding these waters held Jap garrisons for whom death was certain: U.S. forces were coming to get them...
...three surviving brothers joined up again in World War II. Kermit died, at 53, on active duty in Alaska in June 1943. Archie, wounded last month, at 50 is a lieutenant colonel, fighting on Biak Island. "Young Teddy" saw action in Tunisia, Sicily, Italy and Normandy, was thrice wounded...
This week, after a thoroughgoing aerial bombardment, U.S. troops under Douglas MacArthur's command landed on tiny Noemfoor Island, 60 miles west of Biak off the north "New Guinea coast. They seized Karmiri airfield, went to work mopping up. On Biak, MacArthur's men already controlled an airfield only 880 miles from the Philippines. Noemfoor's field is 80 miles closer...