World Battlefronts: Short Haul, Long Haul

The big Boeing B-29s are a white hope of the Pacific war: military men expect them to carry the U.S. message of force direct to the Japanese people, who still seem to think that everything is hunky-dory for the New Order. Last week the B-29s took off on two different types of raids, not from their old China bases but from India, where the B-29s’ vast bellies could be easily filled with gasoline and bombs.

First raid was one of the shortest the big planes ever undertook: 500 or 600 miles to Rangoon, Burma’s No. 1 city, which fell to the Japs in March 1942.

On such short hauls each B-29 could carry perhaps ten tons of bombs, an unheard-of load for any bomber in the vast Pacific theater. All the B-29s returned, but three P-47s of the escort —the first the Superfortresses ever had—were lost to heavy antiaircraft fire at the target: Rangoon’s railway yards.

More spectacular was the second India-based B-29 raid: nearly 2,000 miles for a daylight strike at Singapore, the first since Britain’s naval bastion fell to the Japs in February 1942. Except for a B-29 night raid last August on Palembang, Sumatra, this was the longest mission ever made by bombers. Tokyo said 30 B-29s were involved.

Washington claimed two direct hits on “a Japanese ship that was in the drydock for repairs,” an obvious hint that the Japs might soon find naval repairs impossible anywhere south of Japan itself.

The raid was also a reminder that burgeoning U.S. production of Superfortresses had given the Japanese something new and imminent to fear. No Japanese could doubt that the Superfortresses which had already struck from China and India would soon be striking from other bases.