Word: dakar
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Vichyfrenchmen in Dakar looked over their shoulders at Liberia, where U.S. troops, according to Reuters last week, had built two airports. Dakar might find itself suddenly caught between two camps. Berlin studied the corners of a chessboard; either airpower had to be shifted from Russia or Rommel would continue to lose the battle of supply. Rome had reason to be afraid. If Rommel's army was destroyed, the Allied fist would be pointed from North Africa at Italy's soft underside...
Vichy's Admiral Jean François Darlan, the little officer with the big opportunism, returned last week from an inspection tour of Casablanca and Dakar, to which, said a Vichy spokesman, "circumstances give very special importance." Admiral Darlan professed himself satisfied with what he saw. Vichy's control over the forces at Dakar was strengthened by the arrival in France of a shipload of 1,300 wives and children of Dakar residents and soldiers. This brought the total number of such potential hostages in France...
From June through September western winds dump great rains on Dakar and the adjacent Senegalese coast. Then the harmattan (from the French-Arabic for evil) starts to blow from off the scorching Sahara. By November Dakar's lush greenery begins to parch. The sky is so blue that it looks black. Roads are heavy with dust, but passable for military travelers...
...Most of Dakar's white inhabitants are crowded into the twelve-mile peninsula that curves out from Africa like a beckoning finger, vulnerable to combined land-sea-air attack. The French know that one reason for the failure of the De Gaulle-British expedition two years ago was the lack of sufficient land and air strength in support of the Royal Navy's frontal assault. The French also know that the United Nations-with an air base at Bathurst (some 80 miles to the south) and troop pools filling up with U.S. soldiers along the African west coast...
...Improbable. Dakar lacks ground facilities to base that many planes, but by using all Vichy bases in West Africa-Senegal, French Guinea, etc.-500 planes might be accommodated...