Beyond the Gilberts

In the island-studded stretches of the Pacific, the U.S. Navy was in heavy battle against the Japanese. It was not a single battle, but many. The results were not as yet decisive, for the cloud of censorship was as thick as the cloud of battle. But this much was clear: the Navy had task forces out, and they were at work.

U.S. citizens learned from Tokyo that a task force ranging 2,900 miles west from Pearl Harbor had raided a Japanese island in the Bonin group. Tokyo made the expected observation: only superficial damage was done. The fact stood, nevertheless, that the Navy, beyond its convoy work to Australia, was punching a long way from home. The Bonins are only 1,200 miles from Tokyo.

West of the Gilbert Islands, at least 5,000 miles southwest of Los Angeles, Japanese bombers attacked a task force, including a U.S. carrier identified by the Japanese as the Yorktown. Correspondent Francis McCarthy of the U.P. was on a heavy cruiser. "Only the term 'mass suicide' can describe the fate of the seven bombers that made up the first attacking wave," he wrote. "They approached this warship from starboard slightly astern at an estimated altitude of 8,000 to 10,000 feet.

"Lethal five-inch guns aboard our 'tin cans' [destroyers] opened up while the raiders still were thousands of yards away. All the time our fighters were darting in & out. One flustered raider unloaded a stick of bombs at least a mile from any objective."

Anti-aircraft fire got some of the Japs. One was knocked down, according to the Navy, less than 100 yards from the carrier, as he tried to crash the flying deck. Through their own heavy anti-aircraft fire, U.S. Navy fighters whipped after the Jap. Continued McCarthy:

"I saw ah audacious American fighter--[Lieut. Edward] O'Hare, I learned later-dart recklessly into a torrential hail of flak . . . clip off a straggler, and then in leapfrog fashion shoot down at least two others. It couldn't have taken more than a minute or two. That was the last straw for the Japs."

Three Jap planes jettisoned their bombs and turned tail. O'Hare & friends overhauled them, shot them down. More bombers, nine this time, came on to attack. Anti-aircraft chewed them up, fighters ran them down. When the shooting was all over, the Japanese had lost 16 of the 18 planes they had sent over. U.S. losses: one pilot, two planes. Black-browed Lieut. O'Hare's score: six planes in a single flight, a record.*

* Previous record (from World War I): five.

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