Word: kwajaleins
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...command's greatest need was a fleet anchorage in the western Pacific, fronting on the Philippine Sea. Saipan and Guam could serve only as staging points for a fleet; what was wanted was a landlocked basin such as Pearl Harbor, a blue lagoon like Kwajalein, Eniwetok or Majuro. A fine harbor could be had at Palau, a poorer one at Yap; a lagoon could be secured at one of several atolls in the western Carolines-far beyond the bypassed enemy strongholds of Truk and Ponape...
Commander of the corps that stormed the island was 62-year-old Lieut. General Holland M. ("Howlin' Mad") Smith, whose Amphibious Corps had taken Tarawa, Makin, Kwajalein. Commanders of his two Marine Divisions: the Second, blocky, 52-year-old Major General Thomas E. Watson; the Fourth, jut-jawed, 58-year-old Harry Schmidt...
When the U.S. made its latest leap 1,200 miles west from Kwajalein, into Saipan, key to the Marianas, Shimada had to put up or shut up. Caught in an impossible dilemma, he made the worst decision possible: a compromise...
Were the carrier-aircraft strikes at Guam merely preparatory blows, like that of Feb. 21-22? Or were they the curtain-raiser for a lightning amphibious conquest patterned after Tarawa and Kwajalein...
...hurled steel from 640 guns. They arrived in two divisions. On the east they were British and Canadian vessels under the command of Rear Admiral Sir Philip Vian. On the west they were U.S., under the command of Rear Admiral Alan G. Kirk. Never before, not at Tarawa or Kwajalein or Salerno, had a target been subjected to such overwhelming bombardment from...