Word: jap
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Less than 18 months ago, when Marines in the Solomons hung by their fingernails to the first breach in the enemy's outer chain, the enemy's naval thrusts were met desperately. Now the Navy hoped for nothing better than that the Jap should come out and fight...
There was plenty of dirty work to do. On Nov. 12-13, when a U.S. force sank a Jap battleship, five cruisers, five destroyers and eight transports, the O'Bannon scored hits on a battleship and a cruiser which far outweighed and outranged her. For six months of almost continuous naval warfare she was in the thick of the campaign which did not end until Guadalcanal was secured...
Lucky and Valiant. Around South Pacific bars, MacDonald's O'Bannon became a legend. In June 1943, Admiral Halsey began the drive to knock the Japs out of the rest of the Solomons. The O'Bannon was in the thick of that campaign. She was with the outnumbered cruiser task force which plowed into the dark hole of Kula Gulf to intercept and destroy nine to eleven Jap cruisers and destroyers. That was the night the great cruiser Helena was lost (TIME...
...days later the O'Bannon was one of a small force which steamed boldly up to Jap-held Vella Lavella to rescue Helena survivors who were hiding there in the jungles. Two months later off the same shore, she and her sister the Chevalier and the smaller Selfridge met and engaged a force of nine Jap ships, sank three of them and put the rest to rout. The Chevalier, torpedoed, sank. The lucky and valiant O'Bannon survived to win her Presidential citation...
...Under such a system "Buzz" Wagner, first U.S. ace of World War II, who actually had eight victories when he was killed, would have been credited with about 60 Jap planes...