Word: geelvink
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Between MacArthur and the western end of New Guinea were two Japanese armies at least 100,000 strong: the Eighteenth, under Lieut. General Nijusan Adachi, with headquarters at Madang; the Second, spread from Geelvink Bay to Vogelkop's beak at Sorong. But it was no part of MacArthur's strategy to meet any of these masses headon. His strategy was to fight only as much as was necessary to gain footholds behind them. Then he was behind them and they behind him. Whichever lost control of air and sea was then undone...
Despite their experience in the Solomons, the Japs were forced to start running "Tokyo Express" flotillas of destroyers, sometimes with cruisers, down the Spice Islands into Geelvink Bay, between the Schoutens and New Guinea's mainland. Whether they were for reinforcement or for evacuation, Allied flyers could not tell. But they attacked them anyway, sank five destroyers, routed four sections of the express. Biak got no help...
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