World Battlefronts: BATTLE OF THE PACIFIC: Invading the Jap Ocean

Blue exhaust flames flicker like fireflies in the predawn darkness. On the flight decks of U.S. carriers, dive-bombers, torpedo planes and fighters are being revved tip. One by one they soar out, their red and green riding lights skimming lower over the shadowy superstructures of a multitude of warships. Gaining altitude they form in flights, circle, flock toward the dark horizon.

This scene, which has taken place many times before when U.S. task forces struck Japanese islands, took place again last week, but this time it marked something more and different.

This time the target beyond the dark horizon was Palau, 1,176 miles due west of Truk, only 550 miles short of the Philippines. And this time it was a far bigger operation than any the U.S. Navy had previously undertaken in the Pacific. In fact, both in its execution and in its objective, this was an operation involving the whole Pacific theater.

Big Business. Palau, which lies more than 1,100 miles west of Truk, also lies nearly 1,100 miles northwest of General MacArthur’s farthest outpost in the Admiralties. On this deep thrust into Japanese waters the Navy went with no light task force, but with a full-fledged battle fleet. Of the 50 carriers which Secretary Knox last week announced were in the Pacific, many took part. So did enough battleships to challenge the main Japanese fleet.

To protect this major force in its deep penetration, important Japanese air bases for hundreds of miles to the east and south were methodically neutralized:

¶ Truk was bombed nine times in five days—five times by Seventh Air Force bombers from the new U.S. bases in the Marshalls, four times by General MacArthur’s Fifth and Thirteenth Air Forces.

¶Other bombers from Nimitz’ command repeatedly blasted Ponape and Kusaie.

¶Other bombers of the Thirteenth Air Force took out Kapingamarangi, south of Truk.

¶Still other bombers of the Fifth struck at the big Japanese air base at Hollandia in central New Guinea, 520 miles west of Lae.

In one day the Thirteenth and Fifth alone shot down 172 Japanese planes. The operation, in short, was based on no less ambitious a plan than to put the entire Japanese air force, operating in all the islands east of the Philippines, out of action for the duration of the attack.

Bigger Game. The obvious aim of the operation was even bigger. On Feb. 16 Truk was first struck, but the Japanese pulled back their naval units. On Feb. 22 a similar blow was made at Saipan; again the Japanese drew back. Although they did not give up these islands—their garrisons will probably stay put till rooted out—this Japanese naval retirement meant that the Japanese had to withdraw their main seaborne supply route farther west, until it was out of U.S. reach.

By the blow at Palau the U.S. extended its reach. Unless the Japanese were willing to meet the thrusts of the U.S. Navy at or near Palau, they would have to withdraw their supply route still farther west, to the Philippines, leaving all their mid-Pacific garrisons as well as their garrisons in New Guinea, New Britain and New Ireland at the end of a very long and tortuous line.

It was not only an operation in which Nimitz and MacArthur cooperated, but an operation which would make further advance easier for both.

The Blow. At Palau it looked as if the Jap Navy would choose to retire from another segment of the Pacific rather than give battle. Japanese scout planes had sighted the U.S. battle force as it approached, and long before the U.S. fleet hove in sight, Japanese vessels fled from the harbor.

From the islands of Palau the Japanese had launched their first air attacks on the Philippines. From Palau they had staged their advance into New Guinea. It was Palau that they called the “spigot” of their oil supply—i.e., The Netherlands East Indies. And Palau was one of Japan’s finest naval bases.

What U.S. pilots saw as they glided in over Palau was a huge, reef-encircled lagoon, splotched with hilly green islands near the eastern rim. Sprawling over a round island near the main entrance to the lagoon was the sizable town of Koror, mostly composed of laborers’ barracks. The U.S. airmen saw the results of Jap labor—two or three islands razed level for fighter and bomber strips, cement jetties from which roads curled back into the jungle to camouflaged fuel and ammunition dumps.

Bombs splattered over this Gauguin landscape, and presumably naval gunfire added its voice to the destruction, but the U.S. battle fleet wrapped itself in a cloak of radio silence—which left the damage done, and the fleet’s further operation, an incompleted tale.

¶ This week the Navy department announced that Admiral Nimitz’ Central Pacific forces had “established U.S. sovereignty” on ten more atolls strewn throughout the Marshall Islands. This gave the U.S. 14 Marshall atolls, including Kwajalein and Eniwetok, left the puzzled Japs only four: Jaluit, Mili, Wotje and Maloelap—the strongly-defended spots the Japs expected to be invaded in the first place.