World: Slugging Match

“A very thin margin” separates the balance of sea power in the Pacific. Last week the U.S. claimed that margin. “Slowly but surely we are tightening our grip,” said Admiral Chester William Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet.

“Slowly” meant “not without losses” (see p. 36); “surely” meant progress only at those points along the great arc of Japanese conquest (see map) where the U.S. struck early and hard.

“Do not for one minute assume,” said Nimitz, “that we have the Japanese on the run. . . . Our tactics must be such that our objectives will be gunned, bombed or torpedoed to destruction. This our enemy will understand and respect.”

In the Solomon Islands 750 Japanese were trapped, then “massacred” by tanks which ground hundreds of the bodies into the rubble and splinter of a coconut grove. At Milne Bay in New Guinea 120 Japanese were “slaughtered” by U.S. and Australian troops slugging it out for a vital airfield. Far north at Kiska Harbor in the Aleutians, U.S. bombers and escorting fighters flushed land troops and “mowed ’em down like straws.” These were actions that the Japanese, fighting just as desperately, could respect. They could also understand the U.S. strategy of kill-or-be-killed.

Grey Skies. The pathway to the ultimate goal of a United Nations advance from the South Pacific is long and tortuous. Closer to Tokyo by 600 miles is the U.S. air base at Dutch Harbor. Here last week, at the northern end of the Japanese arc, U.S. air power struck a solid blow.

Army bombers, escorted by Lockheed P-38 fighters, dropped out of the Aleutian fogs and plastered Kiska harbor. Four Jap Zero fighters were shot down. An estimated 500 Japanese soldiers were killed or wounded. The announcement that the long-range P-38s had been used foreshadowed a new technique in aerial bombardment.* The raids on Kiska also foreshadowed the day when U.S air power, flowing north over the new Canadian inland air route, may blast the Japs out of Kiska—and move on toward Tokyo.

Green Snakes. In the South Pacific, the fight for control of Port Moresby in New Guinea unfolded like an old newsreel of the disastrous Malay and Burma campaigns. With their faces painted green and in green uniforms, Japanese troops moved over the “impenetrable” Owen Stanley mountains. In the great equatorial-rain forests’ “battle of lungs” the Japs had the advantage against Australian troops (accustomed to a dry desert climate). Wearily the Australians and some U.S. service troops (engineers, etc.) prepared for a last-ditch stand. The fighting was so fierce that “no prisoners have been taken yet.” Australians said the Japs killed their own wounded, played “possum” among dead soldiers and rose up to throw hand grenades.

Scar-lipped Major General George C. Kenney, new Allied air commander in the Southwest Pacific area (see p. 63), said his flyers were taking a five-to-one toll of Jap planes. But he added: “If anybody thinks we haven’t got a fight on our hands down here they’d better roll over and start dreaming on the other side.”

Home-guard guerrillas were organized in Australia as the Japs, advancing in New Guinea, advanced also toward the Australian mainland. Everybody in Australia knew that MacArthur’s planes were too few, their crews overworked; that Australia invaded would be in dire straits. In New Zealand, Prime Minister Peter Eraser, just home from the U.S., broadcast: “We shall have to steel ourselves for the next twelve months. . . . It’s not enough simply to hold the enemy. The United Nations must advance.”

White Ants. By controlling the lower Solomons, the U.S. forces: 1) protected supply lines to Australia; 2) threatened the Jap naval system centered at Truk Island (TIME, Aug. 31); 3) poised for the recapture of more Jap-held territory. Jap strategy demanded that the U.S. be dislodged. The dislodging was not simple. U.S. marines shot Jap snipers out of trees, cursed the islands’ hordes of white ants, doggedly and efficiently cleaned out nests of resistance (see p. 57). For five days in succession the Japs sent over bombing planes. On one of the first raids Marine Corps pilots led by Lieut. Robert McLeod, onetime Dartmouth All-America halfback, knocked down eight of nine planes. Lieut. J. H. King of Boston got a twin-engined job “tagging along on the tail of the formation like a fat and happy goose.”

A carrier-based naval squadron of dive-bombers and torpedo planes smashed a Jap fleet movement of one carrier flanked by cruisers and destroyers. Torpedo-plane Pilot Lieut. Bruce Harwood of Claremont, Calif., flew within 800 yards of the carrier (presumably the 7,100-ton Ryuzyo) before releasing a “pickle” that sent a giant plume of flame from the ship’s bow. In the opening Solomon Islands’ sea battle Jap fleet units took a terrific pounding. To U.P. Reporter Joe James Custer the great balls of flame being volleyed back & forth over the blue court of the ocean turned the scene into “a tennis match in hell.” Thrown back when they tried to regain a foothold on Guadalcanal Island, the Japanese were trapped by a counterattacking flanking force, the sea at their rear and U.S. forces covering the Tenaru river (see cut, p. 34). When U.S. tanks attacked, there was nothing for the Japs to do but surrender (which few did) or be crushed and blown to bits.

Yet the Japs kept coming. By last week they had lost at least 22 ships in the Solomons area. Between Aug. 7 and Sept. 15 they lost 165 planes. They concentrated their aerial bombing on the captured Guadalcanal air base. In northern Tulagi Island Jap troops which escaped death or capture (450 were captured) were joined by night landing parties. The Marines clearly were under heavy and growing pressure. It was up to the Navy, which had started the Solomons show, to finish it. The battle for the occupied portion of the Solomons was by no means over.

Delayed news reports and naval reticence prevented an up-to-the-minute picture of the action. But correspondents last week were allowed to cable that a temporary lull presumably meant the Japanese were readying a seaborne task force to recapture old positions. Chungking reported that the Japanese naval command had detailed four battleships to the Solomons area. Army Flying Fortresses spotted and bombed a strong naval force northeast of Tulagi, but could claim only “possible hits” on two battleships. A sea-&-air battle on the scale of Midway and the Coral Sea was imminent.

* With a practicable combat radius of 600 miles or more, compared to about 150 miles for Spitfires, the P-38s greatly extend the areas in continental Europe which can be attacked under essential fighter cover.