Word: straitly
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Against the Japanese afloat the U.S. Navy has done plenty of damage since Pearl Harbor. Because of such hit-&-run battles as the Battle of Macassar Strait, only the Japanese know how badly they have been hurt. But the U.S. Navy, with a fair idea of what it had done, knew enough last week to publish a summary of Japanese ships that it was positive it had sunk or knocked...
Over Balikpapan on the east Borneo coast the smoke hung thick; flames from the oil wells fired by the Dutch stabbed red into the murk. The Japanese were closing in. Off the port in the Strait of Macassar a great Japanese convoy stood, ready to move south toward Java. Before the next dawn. Feb. 24, it had been slashed into gaping disorder in one of the wildest naval raids in modern naval history...
...Port Moresby, ahead of advancing jungle troops. (see p. 19) Toward the east, along the line the Japs might follow toward New Zealand or eastern Australia, more bombs struck Tulagi in the Solomon Islands. Jap scouts hovered over Australia's northeastern tip and the islands of the Torres Strait. U.S. P-40s based at Darwin met attacking bombers and fighters, knocked several from the sky. Jap warships were reported here & there on the approaches to Australia, but either the reports were mistaken or the Japs were feinting, feeling for Allied naval weakness...
...R.A.A.F. and long-range U.S. bombers hammered the airdrome at Gasmata, Jap-occupied town on New Britain's southern coast, swept northeast to Rabaul to catch grounded Jap bombers with at least one direct hit. Jap bombers left their bloody calling cards at tiny isles in Torres Strait, between New Guinea and northern Australia. The Japs were blasting out their invasion road...
...believed that the risks would be justified, that warships were built to be risked and perhaps lost. But higher orders kept the combined Dutch and U.S. Fleets from the offensive until the Japs were firmly based in the northern Celebes and upper Borneo, were on the way down the Strait of Macassar...