Dozens of disaster victims pulled from the water Two massive bombardments just possibly scared off And—by far the most important credit—the Tokyo Express of Rear Admiral Raizo Tanaka ambushed and definitely turned back twice after a powerful cruiser force had failed at the job. Even after the postwar assessment teams cut down PT sinking credits to a fraction of PT claims, there is still plenty of credit left for a force ten times the size of the Tulagi fleet. 3. Battering Down the Gate: the Western Hinge Toward the end of 1942, as the Japanese defense of Guadalcanal was crumbling, American forces began to inch forward elsewhere in the Pacific, most notably on the island of New Guinea, almost 600 miles to the west of Guadalcanal. New Guinea is the second largest island in the world (only Greenland is larger). Dropped over the United States, the island would reach from New York City to Houston, Texas; it is big enough to cover all of New England, plus New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky, and all of Tennessee, except for Memphis and its suburbs. Even today, vast inland areas are unexplored and possibly some tribes in the mountains have never even heard about the white man—or about the Japanese either, for that matter. The island is shaped like a turkey, with its head and wattles pointed east. [Illustration: PHILIPPINE ISLANDS] Mindanao Palau Is. Celebes Timor Arafura Sea Guam Caroline Islands Micronesia New Guinea Hansa Bay Nassau Bay Early in the war, right after the fall of the Philippines and of the East Indies, the Japanese had landed on the turkey’s back. The Australians held the turkey’s belly. The Japanese had tried to cross the grim Owen Stanley Mountains, to get at the turkey’s underside, but tough Australian troops had slugged it out with them and pushed them back. The fight in the mountains was so miserable for both sides that everybody had tacitly agreed that the battle for New Guinea would be decided along the beaches. Splitting the very tip of the turkey’s tail is Milne Bay, a magnificent anchorage. Whoever held Milne Bay could prevent the other side from spreading farther along the coast. Australians and Americans, under the command of General MacArthur, moved first, seized Milne Bay in June of 1942, and successfully fought off a Japanese landing force. A curious example of the misery the homefolks can deal out to front-line fighters is the mix-up caused by the code name for Milne Bay. For some obscure reason, the Gili Gili base, at Milne Bay, was called “Fall River.” Naturally, according to the inexorable workings of Murphy’s Law (if anything _can_ go wrong, it _will_) many of the supplies for Milne Bay were delivered to bewildered supply officers at Fall River, Massachusetts.