Word: mi
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...Makings of Victory. Allied troops held nearly 80,000 of Sicily's 99,000 sq. mi. They had the German defenders pocketed in a shrinkage triangle, some 60 miles wide at its base, 70 miles deep on each side. The German forces had lost so many of their airdromes, roads and railways that supply and communication between their units was seriously impeded. The U.S. and Royal Navies, including many U.S. torpedo boats, dominated the Mediterranean waters around the island; Allied airmen held as absolute air control as could be, short of enemy capitulation. The Italian troops still with...
...Ploesti. To attack it properly the Ninth U.S. Air Force, in the Middle East, built up a powerful group of Liberator bombers, its pilots and bombardiers specially trained for low-level bombing. One day this week more than 175 of the bombers took off on the long (2,400 mi.) mission. Droning over Greece and Bulgaria, they crossed the Danube just before 3 in the afternoon and dropped low above the villages and farms of Rumania...
...this part of the Balkans the Germans had strong air defenses. The Liberators shot down at least 51 enemy fighters, lost 20 U.S. planes over the target and eleven more on the return. Over Ploesti's 19 sq. mi. of oil derricks, refineries, storage tanks and Tracking plants, the bombers dived dangerously low, within 500 ft. of the ground and often through flames from the fires. One Liberator was destroyed by a bomb blast. Behind them earth and air trembled, patterns of black smoke blossomed and merged into one massive pall...
...Sicily is a different kind of target. It is much bigger (9,926 sq. mi. to Pantelleria's 32), more nearly self-contained, with stronger local aircraft and other defenses. If the Germans and Italians are able or willing to do so, the island can be given air cover from the mainland. At a few points the Axis air defenses stiffened last week, although as a whole they were noticeably weak. There were unconfirmed reports that the Luftwaffe had shifted its western Mediterranean air command from Sicily to northern Italy. But it still had defensive fighters on the island...
...covered much of central China some 2,200 years ago. Ch'ii sought vainly to ferret corruption from his government, was slandered and exiled. Heartbroken, he composed his famed poem Li Sao (Dissipation of Sorrow), then on the fifth day of the fifth moon drowned himself in the Mi-Lo River. Legend relates that kind fishermen tried to recover his body, thereby began the custom of the dragon-boat races. But in Chungking last week the festival's origin was less in mind than the chance it gave for a few hours of play, the feeling it gave...