Word: jap
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...Surabaya, on the island of Java, was not sleeping. Lights glittered along the waterfront, indicating that the Jap was making full use of this great shipping and naval base he had torn from the Dutch. Out of the dawn swept a formation of Liberator bombers, their exhausts glowing red. For 70 minutes they "buzzed" the city, bombing warehouses, railroads, docks. Most important target was the big oil refinery. As the bombers winged homeward to their Australian base, flames from the refinery could be seen for 140 miles. It was the longest raid of the Pacific war-2,400 miles round...
...Torpedo 8 was one of the first American squadrons "to use Guadalcanal for the purpose for which it was taken-as an unsinkable aircraft carrier anchored in the throat of Japan's South Pacific conquests." They learned to know "the groove"-a' long strait down which the Jap Navy escorted its transports to the beach and on whose blue waters lay "a great glitter of sunlight . . . making ships as difficult to spot as pins in a tray of diamonds." On Aug. 24, in the Second Battle for the Solomons, Torpedo 8 went out to revenge Midway...
...nearest big one," said Swede Larsen over the radio, and these "were the only words uttered by anybody during the whole attack." Northwest of the target hung a purple curl of cloud. Torpedo-planes sheltering in it would have a vital 20 seconds' protection from the Jap gun ners before emerging on the very nose of the target...
Arithmetic of Destruction. The Jap ships were dead ahead of them. Zeros were flashing from nearby clouds, scud streaming off their wings. Torpedo 8's plummeting craft were so low "a man could hang his hat on them." Twenty thousand eyes, thought Swede, must be watching from the decks below, ten thousand minds trying to estimate what he and his mates would do. "And there the torpedo pilot sits, throwing his plane around with both hands and both feet, his eyes flitting from enemy plane to enemy ships to target to waves to altimeter to speedometer, his brain racing...
...three months and one week," concludes Author Wolfert, "[Torpedo 8] carried out 39 attack missions. . . . They were credited with two carriers. They also hit a battleship, five heavy cruisers, four light cruisers, one destroyer, and one transport. . . . When there were no Jap ships to torpedo, they glide-bombed Japs on the ground." After one such bombing, the Marines found 407 enemy dead. The Author. Ever since his hasty birth in a bathtub (Manhattan, 1908), talented Author Wolfert has been in a hurry. In the last 19 months he breathlessly...