BATTLE OF THE PACIFIC: World’s Greatest

Westward across the Pacific from the U.S. flew tall, taut Admiral Ernest King, Commander in Chief of the U.S. Fleet. Up from a post in the South Seas flew stocky, pugnacious Admiral William Halsey, Allied Commander in the South Pacific. At Pearl Harbor, in the chart-cluttered headquarters of white-haired, unhurried Admiral Chester Nimitz, Commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, a conference took place.

Never had three sea dogs met with such consciousness of power. Here, across this sheltered, sun-warmed bay less than two years ago, the U.S. Navy lay writhing, its backbone splintered by savage, surprise attack. Now, after months of unparalleled building, the U.S. Navy had recovered, had grown to history’s mightiest naval force, a sea-&-air colossus of 14,072 ships and 18,000 planes.

Before the three admirals lay the conquest of the world’s greatest ocean. For almost two months Pacific Fleet units had been boldly poking into the “hornet’s nest,” the cluster of Jap bases in the Marshall and Gilbert Islands. Now, as the admirals planned, came word of a raid on the flank of the hornet’s nest. A carrier task force, guided by Rear Admiral Alfred E. Montgomery, had shelled and bombed Wake Island, where the Japs finally overran a little band of Marines on Christmas Eve, 1941.

Wake was only one point in the long perimeter, from the Kuriles to the Solomons, where the admirals could hurl their giant weapon.

Another Admiral. Eastward above the sun-scorched plain of India flew the big transport Marco Polo. At New Delhi the plane circled down, taxied to a hangar’s shade. The rear underhatch opened, a ladder thrust down. Out climbed an immaculately groomed Briton in the semitropical khaki of a Royal Navy Admiral. A welcoming line of high-ranking Allied officers, flecked with gold braid and turbans, snapped to salute. Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, cousin of the King-Emperor, ex-chief of the Commandos and now Allied Commander in Southeast Asia, briskly returned the salute. Down the line of officers he stepped gingerly, grasping each hand with a toothsome smile, letting each go with a look of tight-lipped determination.

Lord Louis had arrived to iron out the last organizational wrinkles in his new command, to get set for an expected push into Burma or Malaya. That day he talked with U.S., Chinese and British officers. Next day arrived Lieut. General Brehon Somervell, chief of the U.S. Army Service Forces, and Lieut. General Joseph Stilwell, U.S. commander in the China-Burma-India theater. From New Delhi Lord Louis planned a trip to Chungking to talk over with Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek the big and vital job of reopening an overland path to China.