Japanese Generals Laughed At US Island-Hopping, Until Marines Bypassed 100,000 Troops In 6 Months скачать в хорошем качестве

Japanese Generals Laughed At US Island-Hopping, Until Marines Bypassed 100,000 Troops In 6 Months

November twelfth, nineteen forty-three. Underground command bunker, Rabaul, New Britain. Vice Admiral Jinichi Kusaka watched through the narrow observation slit as American carrier aircraft circled overhead like vultures. For the third consecutive day, they struck with impunity. Bombs cratered his airfields. Fighters machine-gunned his positions. And there was nothing, absolutely nothing, he could do to stop them. But what disturbed Kusaka more than the raids themselves was what came after. The Americans didn't invade. They didn't land troops to capture this fortress that Japan had spent two years transforming into the most heavily defended position in the South Pacific. They simply left. Sailed away. As if Rabaul, with its one hundred thousand troops, five airfields, and miles of underground tunnels, didn't matter at all. In his private journal that evening, Kusaka wrote words that would have earned him a court martial if discovered by Imperial Headquarters. "The Americans are not fighting us. They are strangling us. Each bypassed garrison is another weight dragging the Empire toward the ocean floor."