Jim Downey
speaker
621 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jul 2026
last heard 13 Jul
Jim Downey’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
After nine days, the last of the survivors is rescued.
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The last of ten.
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The following night, November 14, 1942, Compso-Pec Vice Admiral Bill Bolhousie dispatches Task Force 64 under Rear Admiral Willis Lee.
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This force includes two battleships, the Washington and the South Dakota, and four destroyers.
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It's the first direct battleship versus battleship clash of the Pacific War.
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USS South Dakota is badly mauled early in the action.
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But the Washington's superior radar enables it to close undetected within 9,000 yards of the Japanese battleship, Kirishima, at which point the battleship's 16-inch guns do the rest.
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Combined with Henderson Field's aircraft hammering the Japanese transport convoy throughout the day, the cost to the Americans is a few destroyers and countless lives.
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But by the morning of November 15th, the back of the Tokyo Express is broken.
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Commander of the Combined Fleet, Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku, confesses his despair at how many talented pilots they've lost, telling a confidant, "...the gap between our strengths is increasing every day.
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And to be honest, things are looking black for us now."
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And the Imperial Army isn't faring any better on Guadalcanal.
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Cut off from supplies, more than 30,000 Japanese troops are now stranded and growing frailer by the day.
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They're forced to eat lizards and worms to survive.
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That's right.
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From Yamamoto's infection to these troops' diets, worms of various sorts are playing a role in the Pacific theater.
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Anyhow, the stronger, better supplied American Marines continue to repulse the famished Japanese, leaving the Imperial Army and Navy to figure out how to admit defeat.
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So much national pride has been staked on victory here, that to admit defeat would suggest something far worse, that the war might not be winnable.
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All the same, Admiral Ugaki writes in his diary, Deeming wrong as wrong and impossible as impossible, and without being obstinate because of face-saving or without coaxing others, we should deal with this important matter with the utmost frankness.
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Close quote.
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Showing 481–500 of 621 · page 25 of 32
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