"Hellcats over Truk" Topic
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Robert Kennedy | 26 Jan 2014 1:32 p.m. PST |
"In the first months of 1944, the name Truk had the same ominous foreboding to Navy carrier pilots as Brunswick, Schweinfurt, and Regensburg did to Army Air Forces bomber crews in Europe. The highly-touted "Gibraltar of the Pacific," Truk Atoll in the Carolines was the Imperial Japanese Navy's main fleet anchorage outside the home islands and had a reputation entirely in keeping with its grand purpose. But beyond that, Truk was the object of much speculation and sinister vagueness because almost nothing substantial was known about it. Not even its name was widely known. It was actually pronounced "trook"—"Rhymes with spook," intelligence officers said—but the fliers said "truck." Even Rear Admiral Marc A. Mitscher, who had taken command of the fast carrier Task Force 58 in January, confessed that all he knew about Truk was what he had read in National Geographic. Mandated by the Treaty of Versailles to the Japanese after World War I, the Carolines had been quickly shut off from all outside contact. The rumormongers had it that no white man had seen Truk in 25 years. At least none had lived to talk about it. All sorts of theories were traded back and forth on board the carriers of Task Force 58. Some held that Truk was the real objective of Amelia Earhart's attempted around-the-world flight in 1937. They speculated that she had photographed the Japanese base with secret cameras in her Lockheed Electra but then was shot down and captured. Others said that prewar spies sent to the Carolines had a way of disappearing without a trace. But one thing was indisputable: the U. S. Navy knew virtually nothing about the biggest immediate obstacle standing in its way. That lack of knowledge persisted until the first week of February. A daring Marine PB4Y Liberator crew flew an extra-long 850-mile photo mission from Bougainville to Truk and succeeded in obtaining pictures of most of the islands and the big lagoon. The latter was loaded with enemy shipping. It was plain that the atoll was well suited as a major fleet base, but the full extent of defenses was not entirely clear. Low-lying clouds prevented the Marine photographers from gaining complete coverage. Read more link |
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