Word: ocean
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Crossroads. Vital life lines lead to and through the Indian Ocean. The Germans and the Japanese have not yet choked off those lines, but they are squeezing hard...
Germany has closed the Mediterranean to regular convoys, is driving at the Suez terminus through Libya. Its spring threats of action in the Caucasus and through Turkey are also threats to the Indian Ocean and its seaways. The Japanese have narrowed the Axis pincers from the east. If the Axis finally shuts the pincers and controls the Indian Ocean, China's hopes of supplies through Russia and isolated India will vanish; the only remaining feasible routes from the U.S. to the Middle and Near East will be lost. Russia would have to fall back on uncertain, insufficient Arctic routes...
Just off Africa, athwart the only Indian Ocean lanes now reasonably open to the United Nations, lies Vichyfrance's Madagascar. If it became a base for Axis warships, submarines and planes, it would give Japan and/or Germany complete control of the Indian Ocean crossroads. Madagascar in Axis hands would be a disaster comparable to the loss of Singapore...
...much more was needed. Java, with its Dutch army of some 100,000 brown and white soldiers, would be no pushover. The Jap had to hurry if he was to complete his conquest of the Indies, his advance toward Australia, and his choking hold on the Indian Ocean's eastern trade routes. He hurried...
...raid, had won the first round of the battle of the Caribbean. Aruba was shelled twice (without material damage to the refinery). The raiders had accounted for seven of the shallow-draft tankers that carry oil from the Lake of Maracaibo to the islands. They had sunk four big ocean tankers, had put torpedoes into two freighters anchored off Trinidad. Total Axis casualties: three submarines, probably (but not positively) sunk by depth charges off Aruba...