Japan Called Truk Untouchable — America Wrecked It in 2 Days

WW2, from the records. https://warshelf.com/ February 4, 1944. Two Marine Liberators photograph Truk Lagoon for the first time, and the film shows Musashi, a carrier and a lagoon full of ships. Americans call Truk the Gibraltar of the Pacific. It has perhaps forty anti-aircraft guns, and no radar to aim them. Admiral Koga sees the planes and pulls the fleet out to Palau. The merchant ships, the oilers and hundreds of aircraft stay, and the pilots go on leave. At dawn on February 17 seventy Hellcats come over the reef with the sun behind them. In two days Task Force 58 sinks two light cruisers, four destroyers and thirty-two merchant ships, burns more than two hundred and fifty aircraft, and loses about forty men. The destroyer Oite, carrying 523 survivors of the cruiser Agano, reaches the lagoon in the middle of the raid and is torpedoed at the reef. The base the plan said must be invaded is simply left behind.