Hello everyone and thank you once again for listening to the saga of World War II,

a Cassus Belly project. I hope you all liked the new podcast start. I thought I needed to

update it a little. I was never really happy with the thumbnail image I had before and felt

inspired to make something a little more professional or modern looking. Anyway, so in this episode

we will wrap up the isolation of Rabao, the great Japanese fortress

in the Bismarck Islands that had been the objective of allied operations in the South Pacific

for the past year and a half. We will cover the battles of New Britain and the Admiralty

Islands, which will take us to early 1944 and set the stage for MacArthur's invasion of the

Philippines and then its further drives into the Central Pacific.

As always, if you have comments, questions, or corrections, feel free to reach out to me at

Cassusbelly guy at gmail.com or to visit the website at cassisbellypodcast.com slash World War II

with the number two. I always appreciate feedback from listeners and try to be

prompted my replies. I've also got something special up on the website right now, the official

merch survey. If you'd be interested in purchasing merchandise for the podcast, please go to

Cassisbellypodcast.com slash World War II and take the official merch survey. It's only five

questions, so it would only take a minute.

It's got a few ideas for t-shirt designs and logos. Those won't necessarily be the final

designs, but if enough people express interest, I'll set up a store page on the website where you

can place orders. As you may have noticed, this month is turning out to be a bit hectic.

This is the third episode I've released, and we're only in the Ides of March. That's because I'm making a concerted effort to pick up the pace a little bit and produce more content. I can't promise this will last forever, but I will try to keep the pace up for the time being. The end is actually in sight now that we're entering 1944, and I have a roadmap to finish the war.

My goal is to do it in 30 more episodes, in roughly 18 months.

Now, that is probably a reach goal, but at least it's something to work off of.

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