Word: macassar
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There he sent them into brilliant but unavailing raids and battles over the Indies, the Java Sea, the Strait of Macassar. His fighter protection dwindled, almost vanished. Feb. 17, Brereton and Lieut. General George H. Brett, the top U.S. (and Allied) air commander in the southwest Pacific, agreed that Brett would take the remaining U.S. planes and crews to Australia; Brereton would fly with Britain's General Wavell to India, and there build a force to strike at Japan through China. It was a momentous decision, doubtless reached only after consultation with Washington and London...
Against the Japanese afloat the U.S. Navy has done plenty of damage since Pearl Harbor. Because of such hit-&-run battles as the Battle of Macassar Strait, only the Japanese know how badly they have been hurt. But the U.S. Navy, with a fair idea of what it had done, knew enough last week to publish a summary of Japanese ships that it was positive it had sunk or knocked...
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...
Desdiv (destroyer division) 59 was cruising south of Celebes when it got word to head for Macassar Strait. It quickly found out why. It was to blast the convoy at Balikpapan, peppered that day by Dutch bombers. The monsoon was kicking up a rough sea when Talbot's division set out, at 25 knots...
...risks would be justified, that warships were built to be risked and perhaps lost. But higher orders kept the combined Dutch and U.S. Fleets from the offensive until the Japs were firmly based in the northern Celebes and upper Borneo, were on the way down the Strait of Macassar...