Word: formosae
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Whipped to desperation, the Japs sprang into action. Pearl Harbor announced that a great sea-air battle was raging off Formosa. If the Jap surface forces should come out, this might develop into the decisive naval battle...
Lieut. General George C. Kenney's Far Eastern Air Force had stepped up its bombing of air bases and oil supplies in Celebes and Borneo; Major General Willis H. Hale's Seventh Air Force had smashed at the Bonin and Volcano Islands; Chennault had raided Formosa; the southern Palau Islands had been seized by U.S. troops...
...Inner Waters. If the U.S. target for the next invasion was the Philippines, there was still one major area in which the Japs first had to be beaten groggy. That was the island chain stretching south from the homeland through the Ryukyus and Formosa to Luzon, and the sheltered waterway lying behind the islands through the East and South China Seas...
...next day one of his task groups sent its planes against Aparri in northern Luzon, a Jap landing point in the days of defeat in December 1941. It was a feint as well as a destructive foray. The following day, his main body struck Formosa, stoutest of the Japanese bases outside the homeland...
Counterattack. By this time the Japs were finally goaded to counterattack. So far, not a U.S. ship had been damaged. But as the sun set behind Formosa's jagged peaks, the Jap air force found Mitscher's task groups. The next U.S. communiqué reported the Jap attack beaten off but (perhaps significantly) omitted the familiar reassurance-"no damage to our surface ships...