Word: convoying
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Boston's old, famed harbor lies closer to the Atlantic convoy routes than any U.S. shipping center, 200 miles nearer to Europe than any other big U.S. seaport. Boston Harbor is deep. Railheads are at water's edge. There are plenty of piers, cranes, warehouses for handling cargoes; plenty of trained labor. But last week, while other Atlantic ports were chockablock with war supplies, Boston docks and warehouses were empty.* The nation's handiest harbor on the Eastern Seaboard was a ghost port...
...burst of overdue news about the desperate, last-ditch struggle to hold the Dutch East Indies, the U.S. Navy last week told the story in detail. Its narrator was six-foot, whip-lean Commander Paul Hopkins Talbot, leader of the squadron of four 1917-model destroyers that needled the convoy again & again & again, and got away without dropping a stitch...
Desdiv (destroyer division) 59 was cruising south of Celebes when it got word to head for Macassar Strait. It quickly found out why. It was to blast the convoy at Balikpapan, peppered that day by Dutch bombers. The monsoon was kicking up a rough sea when Talbot's division set out, at 25 knots...
...water and the night was moonless. After midnight four Jap destroyers burst out of the gloom across the course of Desdiv 59. Talbot swung to starboard to avoid them, hoped they would not see him. They disappeared in the night and Desdiv 59 dashed into the middle of the convoy...
There was no chance of missing. There was also no good reason for slowing up to see what damage was done. Once through the convoy, the division wheeled, hammered on a reverse course, let go with more torpedoes. In an hour it made three round trips through the convoy's five-mile length. On the last run the division was out of torpedoes...