Word: saipan
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...have no direct word from Bob Sherrod on Saipan. Here's hoping he is not having as tough a time as he did on the beaches of Tarawa...
...unmistakable victory seemed a week nearer, one not-so-simple fact of war seemed to be emerging: World War II is not yet a crusade. Indeed, the world over, week by week, signs came that there was less & less chance of its becoming a crusade. From Helsinki to Saipan Island, men were fighting with one real and common war aim: to win and go home. Many of them had hoped for higher aims; many still so hoped, all over the world, as in the U.S. But in the 249th week since Sept. 1, 1939, that hope seemed less sure than...
...heaviest blow of the vast Pacific war struck the Japanese Empire in the week when U.S. air bombardment of the homeland began. U.S. amphibious forces, from what was probably the mightiest naval task group ever assembled, stormed ashore on heavily fortified Saipan. They were only 1,500 miles from Tokyo. Previous landing assaults had been against the outer perimeter of Jap defenses. But this was disaster close to home...
...Nimitz' Pacific Fleet was steaming west. Near week's end it struck: hundreds of the Navy's fighters and bombers, flying from a great force of carriers, dropped out of the skies over the Japs' vaunted unsinkable carriers in the Marianas: (from north to south) Saipan, Tinian, Guam, the eastern outposts of the Philippines...
Bigger Game. The obvious aim of the operation was even bigger. On Feb. 16 Truk was first struck, but the Japanese pulled back their naval units. On Feb. 22 a similar blow was made at Saipan; again the Japanese drew back. Although they did not give up these islands-their garrisons will probably stay put till rooted out-this Japanese naval retirement meant that the Japanese had to withdraw their main seaborne supply route farther west, until it was out of U.S. reach...