Word: rabaul
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Between the prayer and the thanksgiving, the U.S. Fifth Air Force had scraped together enough aircraft to dump 350 tons of bombs on Rabaul, Japan's Southwest Pacific air-sea bastion. The surprised Japs lost 60% of their Rabaul air force-100 planes destroyed on the ground, 51 others damaged, 26 shot down. "Sunk or destroyed" were 119 ships ranging from tiny harbor craft to destroyers...
Lieut. General George C. Kenney, Commander of the Fifth, said that the attack "marks the turning point in the war in the South Pacific." MacArthur, more restrained, said that it broke Rabaul's back...
Fighter airdromes on the Trobriand and Woodlark islands and on the edges of Huon Gulf gave MacArthur and Kenney fighter protection for their bombers on the Rabaul run. The Fifth had already hit the right flank of the divided Japanese air strength at Wewak, where the Japs have lost about 500 planes since mid-August. Next, the Thirteenth Air Force in the Solomons softened the Japs in an aerial battle over Kahili, southeast of Rabaul...
AFTER RAID ON RABAUL...
...last week pounded the horn's point with 94 tons of bombs-a heavy raid for that theater. Kenney's fighters flew 250 miles from their base to strafe enemy shipping and installations in , the horn's curve. At the horn's far end stands Rabaul, the enemy's key position in the area and the logical climax of the General's blitz...