Word: palau
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...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...
Biak has three airfields. It is less than 900 miles from Davao on the southern tip of the Philippines, about 500 miles from Palau, the Jap naval base in the western Carolines...
This week naval airmen heard a rumor about Marc Mitscher that had them quietly simmering. Wizened, solemn little Admiral Mitscher, who has been a naval airman since 1916, who commanded the carrier Hornet, "Shangrila" of the Tokyo raid, who commanded the carrier task forces which spectacularly raided Truk, Guam, Palau, is due-said the rumor-to be yanked out of the Pacific...
...Wakde air strip is within 700 miles - easy land-based bomber range - of the big Jap base of Palau, which probably must be neutralized before any invasion of the Philippines can be undertaken...
Allied observers and Japan's civilians could only speculate on the rest: was Koga killed in the U.S. air and naval raids on Truk and Palau on March 29? Was he intercepted by U.S. fighters en route to some Pacific base? Or did he, as Chungking suggested, honorably disembowel himself presumably in protest against the last naval reshuffle (TIME...