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Destroy Truk! – Raid on Japan’s “Gibraltar of the Pacific”

The TBM proved to be everything Grumman and the Navy hoped it would be. At Truk, its torpedoes proved lethal to anchored shipping. (Photo courtesy of Stan Piet)
As the sun rose over Pearl Harbor on New Year’s Day 1944, few who saw that spectacular sunrise could have known that it was the harbinger of the war’s decisive year. Roger Bond, who served as a quartermaster on USS Saratoga (CV-3) for most of the war, recalled afterward that there was a dividing line in the experience of the Pacific war. “I think that, for anyone who participated in the war, there were actually...

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