Word: buka
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Classic Action. In late November 1943, Burke's Little Beavers were refueling in Hathorn Sound when the call came to proceed "at 30 knots" (top speed) and intercept a Japanese force heading for Buka Island, off Bougainville's northern tip and 239 nautical miles away. Burke reported: "Proceeding at 31 knots." An hour later Admiral Halsey received Burke's latest position, along with word that the Little Beavers were still "making 31 knots." The next dispatch Burke received from Halsey was addressed to "31-Knot Burke." Burke had won his name...
...their instruments but also tried to be players. What was gained in verisimilitude was lost in the wooden-Indian school of acting: Crosby, in particular, delivered each line with a granite impassivity that Ed Sullivan might have envied. John Forsythe agonized as the dying piano player, and Actor Donald Buka gave the show a fine shot in the arm as a real gone musician who seemed right in the Bix Beiderbecke tradition...
...Beavers plowed on at 31 knots. They steamed through narrow passages of the Solomons so often and so fast that Burke had to be warned to slow down there: his ships were washing the Army's waterside privies away as fast as they could be built. They shelled Buka and Kavieng, ranged west to the Bismarcks and beyond toward Truk. There was no slackening of their speed, no change in the quality of their shooting...
...came at a time when the Jap was digging in everywhere, the Allies cautiously moving forward. U.S. warships, ignoring the threat from Jap-held Rabaul, less than 200 miles distant, steamed boldly off the northern tip of Bougainville, and for 45 minutes poured shells into Jap air bases on Buka Island. Reinforced U.S. troops fought grimly in the jungles of Bougainville, wrenching advances of several hundred yards in the Empress Augusta Bay area while engineers rushed construction of airstrips. Australian troops, using Matilda tanks smuggled in secretly at night, increased pressure against the Japanese in the Finschhaven sector...
These four Sisters of St. Joseph got back to their mother house at Orange Calif. last week after a long journey, via Guadalcanal. In 1940 they began nursing and teaching on Buka Island in the Solomons. Last year Jap air raids often forced them to take to the jungle...