Word: fleetly
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Back home the people got mad. What had begun as an idealistic adventure became a begrudged duty. General Van Fleet stoutly insisted that the enemy could be defeated militarily inside Korea, but once the enemy insisted on truce talk (which went on & off fruitlessly for two of the three years), U.N. instructions were to protect their lines and avoid excessive casualties...
...years, General MacArthur's forces have been straining to break the Bismarcks Barrier. In the nibbling operations in the Gilberts and Marshalls, the Marines have taken a successful but costly bite at Tarawa. Meanwhile, the Navy has been unable to engage any large part of the Japanese fleet since Midway...
Suddenly, in the four months from April through July 1944, U.S. forces take giant steps to victory. MacArthur leapfrogs nearly 1,000 miles along the New Guinea coast to threaten the Philippines. The Navy moves into the Marianas, 3,500 miles from Pearl Harbor, strips the Japanese fleet of its air arm in a great battle off Saipan and sets up new advance bases. And the Marines and Army take Saipan, Tinian and Guam...
...Cautious? Reduced to 35 planes and minus two carriers, Ozawa hightailed it out of the Philippine Sea. Yet, since he had saved the bulk of his 55-ship fleet, Spruance and Mitscher felt small joy. Had Spruance been overly cautious? No, says Morison, he had the Saipan beachhead to think of. "Military men never get any credit for guarding against dangers that might occur yet do not; but they are quickly 'hanged' if they fail adequately to guard against dangers that do occur-witness Pearl Harbor." Moreover, Morison argues, the battle was fully as decisive as Ozawa thought...
...fleet denuded of its air groups was like a crab without claws. Saipan, Tinian and Guam were doomed. Sake-crazed and glory-minded, the Japanese made desperate banzai charges and blew themselves up with their own land mines. They paid with ten lives for every American marine and G.I. life they took. "On 12 August 1944," concludes Historian Morison proudly, "the Philippine Sea and the air over it, and the islands of Saipan, Tinian and Guam, were under American control. May they never again be relinquished...