BATTLE OF THE PACIFIC: In Blanche Bay

A bomber's moon on four successive nights guided aircraft of General Douglas MacArthur's command over the jungle-clothed mountains of New Guinea to Rabaul. On one raid a Jap cruiser was hit. On another a warship was driven aground. Two other warships and numerous cargo vessels also felt the sting of night raiders striking at the best deep-water harbor in the New Guinea-New Britain area.

Since January 1942 the Japanese had held Rabaul on Blanche Bay, the flooded crater of an extinct volcano which gives deep water almost to the shore. In peacetime Rabaul's tiny wharf was used chiefly by island trading...

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