Word: java
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...dashing attempt of the U.S. Navy to turn the tide in the Battle of Java became public property at last. The U.S.S. Langley, hulking old aircraft tender, was bombed and sunk Feb. 27. She was knocked out by Japanese land-based bombers as she approached Java with a cargo of U.S. fighting planes that might have won the battle and preserved the key of the Indies for the Allies. More than half of the survivors who were picked up by destroyers and transferred to the naval oiler Pecos, were lost two days later when the oiler was sunk...
...story, as it was finally told, the Navy had nothing to be ashamed, much of high courage to remember. To bolster Java's defenses, the old Langley (born the collier Jupiter 29 years ago, transformed into the first U.S. carrier, finally reduced to a drudge's job) was loaded with fighters...
...almost made it. Then, near Java one morning, a single Jap reconnaissance plane circled her, took a look, streaked for home. Bright signal flags fluttered from the Langley's halyards, and her windburned skipper, Commander Robert Perche McConnell, set himself for the worst. It came just before noon...
Over Balikpapan on the east Borneo coast the smoke hung thick; flames from the oil wells fired by the Dutch stabbed red into the murk. The Japanese were closing in. Off the port in the Strait of Macassar a great Japanese convoy stood, ready to move south toward Java. Before the next dawn. Feb. 24, it had been slashed into gaping disorder in one of the wildest naval raids in modern naval history...
...went down. The story was finally broken, because the longer it was withheld the more would public confidence be shaken in the Government's candor about bad news, but even after 35 days the casualty lists were not fully straightened out-if some of the survivors got to Java or other enemy-held islands, their fate may not be known until after...