World War II
When Japan attacked her base on 7 December 1941, Minneapolis was at sea for gunnery practice about 20 mi (32 km) from Pearl Harbor. She immediately took up patrol until late January 1942 when she joined a carrier task force about to raid the Gilberts and Marshalls. While screening Lexington on 1 February, she helped turn back an air attack in which three Japanese Mitsubishi G4M "Betty" medium bombers were shot down. She screened the carriers during their successful raids on 20 February and again on 10 March, when they blasted Japanese shipping at Lae and Salamaua, disrupting enemy supply lines to those garrisons.
Read more about this topic: USS Minneapolis (CA-36)
Famous quotes containing the words world and/or war:
“Night is a dead monotonous period under a roof; but in the open world it passes lightly, with its stars and dews and perfumes, and the hours are marked by changes in the face of Nature. What seems a kind of temporal death to people choked between walls and curtains, is only a light and living slumber to the man who sleeps afield.”
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