For Want of a Plane

In China the spring-legged fury with which the Jap pressed his drives showed that he knew last week that he had begun a battle in which his greatest enemy was time. For China was in a desperate plight, and the Jap worked fast to make it hopeless.

The Japanese had to hurry, because the United Nations had finally caught on: from China's airdromes the Allies could launch the aerial thrust that would smash Japan's industries, hack to bits its traffic in the South China Sea.

With troops to spare after the collapse of the Philippines and Burma, the Jap shot them into the China front in a score of places. His steel noose encircled China from Hankow on the north through Hong Kong on the coast to Myitkyina on the Burma frontier. On the southwest (Burma) side he felt his way up the severed Burma Road, slithered up the valleys out of Siam and Indo-China. He met desperate resistance by Chinese troops, who stopped him time after time, only to find he had popped up somewhere else.

The Jap had planes. He knew where the foe was, could dodge or meet him as he chose. Except for the overworked, ill-equipped fighters of the A.V.G., the Chinese had none. They groped with ground reconnaissance until they met the enemy. And while they fought him foot to foot, they had to take all the punishment which he could mete out from the air.

On the Eastern Front below Shanghai in Chekiang Province, the need of planes was desperate. There the Jap pounded, without regard for his losses, at Kinhwa on the Hangchow-Nanchang railroad. His attack always had the support of plenty of dive-bombers. For a while the Chinese held, but in the end it was the old story.

For want of a plane or two, another battle was lost. Near week's end the weary Chinese army backed out of Kinhwa and the Japanese blustered in.

They had taken a prize, and they knew what to do next. From beachheads down the coast, from Hankow on the north, the pounding went on. Chinese soldiers knew that it would not stop until the Jap was thrown back or until he had the whole eastern railroad system in his hands. With it would go more than the supply system for eastern Free China. With it would go many of the airdromes prepared by Chiang Kai-shek and his patient coolies for the blow at Japan that is yet to come.

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