Word: tarawa
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Lieut, (j.g.) Jay Odell, of St. Paul, was a Naval air liaison officer on Tarawa. The battalion he landed with lost nearly all its staff, so Odell served as Operations officer for a Marine battalion. Afterwards, back in Honolulu, he told this story...
...returned from Tarawa on a transport which brought out many wounded. The Marine officer in the bunk below me said that first night, 'Can you see?' I said yes, I could see. He said, 'I can't see-I will never see again...
...ranging Liberators of Major General Willis Kale's Seventh Air Force struck from runways somewhere in the Central Pacific; they may have used Tarawa's air strip. The bomb doses were small (15 to 40 tons in two of four Army raids). Resistance was light: 20 Zeros appeared over Mili atoll, tried (and failed) to slap the raiders with anti-bomber bombs dropped from above in the German manner. In smaller force, Navy patrol bombers snooped the islands. But the blow that really caught the Japs in the Marshalls with their kimonos off, was a pile-driving carrier...
Admiral Pownall's forces had still more business. From the Marshalls they headed for Nauru, the British phosphate island seized by the Japs in early 1942. There, Tarawa to Truk, the Jap Pearl Harbor, the American fleet, including battleships, shelled and bombed the enemy's airdrome and shore defenses. The score: ten Jap planes destroyed; two U.S. planes lost, one U.S. destroyer damaged by shore batteries...
...lieutenant commander when the fleet sallied out to take the Gilberts last month. Butch O'Hare "hellcatted" the island; he was the first to bring a carrier plane down on conquered Tarawa. A few nights later, off the Marshalls, Jap torpedo planes came over his flat-top again. Butch led the fighters from the deck. Flares shredded the darkness. "You take the side you want," he radiophoned his wingman. "I'll take the port," answered the wingman. "Roger!" said Butch. Tracers glowed around his plane. He sheered off, brought down one Jap, his ninth, then dropped into...