Word: islanded
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Britons' concern with Europe and Soviet policy begins with the simple fact that their home is an island off the continent of Europe. But Britain also speaks for an Empire. There is, therefore, an historic, although not necessarily a dangerous, conflict between the landmass empire of Russia and the globe-girdling, sea-&-air-knit Empire of Britain. In the Middle East the land-empire and the sea-empire meet-and where they meet, there may always be friction...
Last week the Germans retaliated. In their first effort to regain a lost point on Europe's fringe, they launched an air and seaborne assault against tiny Cos and its excellent airfield. The Allies admitted the loss of several strongpoints on the island to the German counterattack. Field Marshal von Weichs was evidently determined to hold the outer ring of Balkan defenses and exact a good price for any Allied landings on the mainland. Other ring positions recently secured by the Germans: strategic Corfu at the entrance to the Adriatic, Cephalonia farther south in the Ionian Sea, and Albania...
This more or less supplementary role was not MacArthur's idea (see p. 35). His strategy and ambition was to drive for the Philippines, with the U.S. Navy supporting him, knocking out flanking Jap island bases on the way, bypassing those which were too far eastward to cause him trouble...
...strategic conception for the Pacific theater . . . contemplates massive strokes against only main strategic objectives, utilizing surprise and air-ground striking power supported and assisted by the fleet. . . . Island-hopping with extravagant losses and slow progress-some press reports indicating victory postponed as late as 1949-is not my idea of how to end the war as soon and as cheaply as possible...
Just who was about to commit the blunder of "island-hopping," the General did not say. Island-hopping has been denounced by all. So far the U.S. has been unable to assemble enough strength in the Pacific to do anything else. But developments had apparently convinced MacArthur that when forces for "massive strokes" were assembled they would be entrusted to someone else. He was to be overshadowed, overlapped, inadequately supplied and relegated to a pipsqueak holding campaign...