Word: straitly
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...Force in Australia reached across the Torres Strait to smash at the Jap on New Guinea, airmen from Main Street got acquainted with exotic strangers...
There he sent them into brilliant but unavailing raids and battles over the Indies, the Java Sea, the Strait of Macassar. His fighter protection dwindled, almost vanished. Feb. 17, Brereton and Lieut. General George H. Brett, the top U.S. (and Allied) air commander in the southwest Pacific, agreed that Brett would take the remaining U.S. planes and crews to Australia; Brereton would fly with Britain's General Wavell to India, and there build a force to strike at Japan through China. It was a momentous decision, doubtless reached only after consultation with Washington and London...
Desdiv (destroyer division) 59 was cruising south of Celebes when it got word to head for Macassar Strait. It quickly found out why. It was to blast the convoy at Balikpapan, peppered that day by Dutch bombers. The monsoon was kicking up a rough sea when Talbot's division set out, at 25 knots...
Next nightfall the division was south of the Strait. The old destroyers boiled up to 27 knots and the bones in their teeth broke and swept across the flush decks knee-deep in spray and foam...
...Commander Talbot order gunfire. His 4-inchers blazed. The Japanese began to fire from armed merchantmen and destroyers. But it was much too late. Only four U.S. sailors were wounded when Desdiv 59, blacked out and wondering just how much damage it had done, bore south through the Strait again. When daylight came, the division looked forward to its leading ship, saw that Talbot had run up the signal that Navy men prize most...