Word: truk
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During the rest of the war, Bill got plenty of action. He flew bombing missions all over the Pacific with Buzz Miller's famous "Reluctant Raiders." He was slightly wounded by flak over Truk, but came through the war in tiptop shape and a lieutenant commander...
...purely military: some islands serve as bases, others (Bikini, Eniwetok) have served as sites for testing atomic bombs. The new High Commissioner sees his task as "giving the islanders a chance to develop." His headquarters: Honolulu, at least until completion of proposed new headquarters at Truk, southwest Pacific base of the wartime Japanese fleet...
...Micronesia, the aircraft carrier came of age. Whereas the Americans were reduced to one flattop in the Solomons in late 1942, they took 16 to the Marshalls in early 1944. Two weeks after Kwajalein, Admiral Marc Mitscher's Task Force 58 smothered the great base at Truk with 568 planes, and sank 200,000 tons of shipping (biggest single day of the war). The Navy, abetted by U.S. industry, had found -in amphibious expertness and carrier proficiency-the twin weapons that would lead to victory...
...Tang's favorite assignment was also "redirecting" Japanese shipping. But during a two-day air strike, Commander Richard Hetherington O'Kane and his men were given a new job: fishing downed airmen out of Truk's big lagoon. The first day was relatively uneventful: only three saved in the teeth of enemy gunfire. On the second day, soon after dawn, the Tang picked up three airmen off fortified Ollan Island; a little later, three more, seven miles to the east. Then a Navy float plane, out on a similar mission, found the sea too choppy to take...
...primary enemy thus became enemy airplanes, the primary defensive position, U.S. air bases. Let Russia or anyone else slip ground troops-airborne or seaborne-into such "islands of tundra" as Nome or Point Barrow, said the airmen, and you could isolate them like the mighty Japanese bases of Truk and Rabaul were isolated in the Pacific war. You would bomb the planes and shelters and leave them all shivering in the cold with no place to march to. Don't make U.S. airplanes vulnerable by scattering them through the wilderness, they said. Let them range from bases...