1945 New Guinea Rescue

1945 New Guinea Rescue
The History Guy is borderline too cheerful,  but the intro is over in a few seconds and then you get right into the story, and quite a story it is.

New Guinea & New Britain
Click the link to see the map and read the labels on the placemarks.

Southeast Asia, especially the islands between the mainland and Australia is complicated mess. It covers a large area, so distances are vast, but then you find out things like New Guinea is a stones throw from Australia. (Yes, that's Australia sticking up from the bottom of the map.)

The whole WW2 New Guinea campaign was kind of weird. There were a whole bunch of battles fought there, but they were just so we could build up enough clout so that we could attack the ginormous Japanese base at Rabaul on the neighboring island of New Britain, and then we didn't. By the time we had enough clout in the area we were able to blockade Rabaul, which made attacking it superfluous.

Three volcanoes are simultaneously erupting on the island of New Britain, Papua New Guinea.
Two, on opposite ends of the island, are indicated by red markers. The third is marked by the stream of ash flying south.

Links, if you want more.

• Ray T. Elsmore
• Battle of Hollandia
• Dani people
• 1945 New Guinea Gremlin Special rescue
• Wewak