World Battlefronts: BATTLE OF THE PACIFIC: End in New Guinea

An Australian infantry commander impatiently signaled a force of Flying Fortresses which were dropping their eggs on Lae. “Forward troops are at the outskirts of Lae. I am prevented from entering by the Fifth Army Air Force.” The Fortresses retired, leaving Lae a shambles, leveled by twelve days of concentrated bombing, shelling and machine-gunning. The Diggers swept in. Lae was in the hands of the Allies.

Most of the Japs had gone. Some 20,000 were originally reported to have been surrounded in the Salamaua-Lae area. Some of them had fled into the jungle, where a few were tracked down and killed. Many others may have managed to escape up the coast in barges. It was obvious that the first estimate of their number was exaggerated. A few who were left resisted to the end. Last official count of total Jap dead: 1,000. The chief prize: Lae airfield. Three miles northeast of the Lae strips was the Malahang airfield, which also fell into Allied hands. It was the fourth time in the last five weeks that the Japs had given up an untenable position rather than make a fanatical last-ditch stand.

All across the Southern Pacific front, air attacks against the Japanese intensified. The Fifth Air Force struck again at Wewak, to which the Japs rushed another supply of planes after Kenney’s pilots wiped out their nest three weeks ago. Flying Fortresses destroyed ten Jap bombers on the ground, knocked out probably 59 fighters of 70-80 that rose to intercept them.

In the Solomons area, the Thirteenth Air Force sent 250 medium and heavy bombers against Bougainville in one day. The Japanese, with recent reinforcements flown in from other bases, made three attempts at retaliation: to minor raids on Guadalcanal, one minor raid on Funafuti. Spokesmen asserted that air patrols had made it impossible for any sizable Jap naval force to remain south of Rabaul for more than 24 hours.

To the people of Japan the Tokyo radio squealed deprecatingly: “The enemy is just attempting to make his overwhelming materiel power do his talking for him.”