Two hundred warships of the U.S. Seventh Fleet stood in to Brunei Bay in northwest Borneo. Off went the landing craft, with less than a division of hardbitten, hard-swearing Australian veterans. One week later, with spectacular ease, they had conquered a major harbor, three airfields, three towns, two islands and a peninsula. With minor losses, they had given General Douglas MacArthur a military base midway between Manila and Singapore, virtually choked off the South China Sea and opened new fields for Allied bombers. After two visits ashore, the General exulted: "Rarely was such a strategic prize obtained at such a low...
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