Word: truk
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...sober military men still stood firm in their predictions of a long war against Japan. Even if the Japs lost Truk (which they will not until many foot soldiers have lost their lives taking it), or if Truk were bypassed, many bases remained for Admiral Koga's Navy: Singapore, Surabaya in Java, Balikpapan in Borneo, Saipan in the Marianas, Manila and the Japanese homeland bases...
...white men had ever seen Truk, one of the world's great naval outposts. The Japs clamped a lid on it years ago when they began developing it as the key to their South Pacific empire-to-be. Last week, in a swift and massive surprise attack by a great U.S. task force, the veil was rent. For two days, swarms of Naval aviators saw Truk, again & again. And Truk took a savage, historic pounding...
...days after Pearl Harbor, Hudson bombers manned by Australian crews had lumbered through the cottony skies to take photographs of the Truk Islands. But not until three weeks ago did Allied cameramen call again. U.S. Marines, flying two Liberators over 2,000 miles of enemy ocean, swooped in, snapped pictures...
Japan's lush and formidable South Seas base was suddenly fixed in hundreds of U.S. airmen's bombsights. Carrier planes -Avengers and Dauntless dive-bombers -hurtled across the green islands which lie within Truk's barrier coral reef, screamed down onto the shipping moored inside the 40-mile-wide lagoon. Snub-nosed Hellcats swirled into fights with Jap defenders, shot them from the air, caught plenty more ignominiously on the ground. After the first few hours there was no longer any doubt: the enemy had been caught napping...
...fleet (commanded by Admiral Spruance) boldly stood off Truk while planes from Rear Admiral Marc Mitscher's carriers worked away. By the end of the first day enemy air opposition had been beaten out of existence...