Hot for the Jap

While the Jap was looking the other way, an amphibious U.S. force steamed by moonlight around Jap-held Kolombangara, landed at dawn on Vella Lavella's south eastern shore. Captured were some 350 surprised Nips, an unheard-of number of prisoners in the South Pacific. Other Japs fled into the jungle.

The unexpected move bypassed Jap-held Bairoko Harbor, Vila airfield and lesser positions in such jungle islands as Gizo. Vella Lavella was important as bait. The Jap bit. He tried almost immediately to land reinforcements on Vella Lavella and came down in 20-to-30 troop-carrying barges escorted by four destroyers. U.S. warships struck. One Jap destroyer was probably sunk, another damaged and a third hit. Most of the barges were sunk. Although an estimated 300 Japs managed to get ashore, some 1,000 perished.

Vella Lavella is of no immediate im portance as a base. But it demonstrated how the U.S. can accelerate its conquest of the Pacific.

On the other flank of the South Pacific front--in New Guinea--U.S. and Australian forces humped towards oft-bombed Salamaua. The Jap's outer defenses along the jungly ridges protecting the Salamaua airdrome suddenly cracked. "All at once," said dispatches, the Japs evacuated their positions and retreated pell-mell to last-ditch defenses around the Salamaua airdrome.

Anxious Seat. From the Jap point of view the situation could never have looked more dangerous than it did last week. Three months ago the Jap, giving ground slowly in New Guinea, still held the initiative in the Solomons. He was in position to attack; the U.S. was on the defence. The capture of Munda reversed that.

Now from his strategic air and naval base at Rabaul, apex of a triangle, the Jap looked down anxiously on Munda. Its coral airfield had been repaired and was in operation as a fighter base. It was being used already against Rabaul's outpost, Bougainville, which the U.S. might conceivably by-pass as it had Kolombangara.

He looked down anxiously on Salamaua. With the capture of Salamaua' the apex would become really hot, within a 500-mile radius of U.S.-held corners of the triangle, within range of U.S. bombers and fighter escorts.

Second Team. Worse luck for the Jap was his inability to scrape together enough air strength at any one place to stop the" Allied air power that kept hitting him in every spot. Last week, when Lieut. General George Kenney decided to force a showdown for air control over central New Guinea, the Jap took the worst licking he has taken yet in the air. He had massed a strong force along the 35-mile-long chain of airfields at Wewak. Over this nest U.S. planes roared. Said Kenney's deputy, Major General Ennis C. Whitehead: "The attacks will continue until either the Jap's or our air force is wiped out." After four days of onslaughts by heavy, high-flying bombers and tree-shaving B-25s, the Jap force, desperately reinforced by planes from Rabaul and Kavieng, was wiped out. By week's end Whitehead's pilots had destroyed 223 Jap planes on the ground and 83 in the air, which brought to well over 500 the number of Jap planes destroyed in the Southwest area since June 16. Allied losses: 47.

In the Solomons area since June 16, when he sent 120 planes over Guadalcanal and lost 94 of them in one day, the Jap has lost 532 planes against an Allied loss of 99. Total losses in both areas: Japs, at least 1,060; Allies, 146.

The Jap's ability to replace pilots was steadily slipping. Veteran flyers in the Pacific say that they have been fighting the "second team" ever since the Battle of Midway in June 1942, when the Jap, losing four carriers, lost his first-string pilots too.

He was better able to replace planes, although he had not shown any ability to increase their strength. Bankrupt of first-rate personnel, he was just able to balance his books on materiel.

Battle Declined. On the sea the Jap had suffered the same kind of steady attrition. Not since the last great Nov. 13-15 naval battle of Guadalcanal, when he lost a battleship, nine cruisers, six destroyers, twelve transports and had two battleships, a cruiser and six destroyers damaged, has the Jap dared get in a real slugfest with U.S. naval units. But since mid-June, in various fruitless sallies, he has lost six to seven cruisers, at least eleven destroyers, one seaplane tender, one transport, four to six cargo ships. Admitted U.S. losses for that same period were the cruiser Helena, the destroyers Strong and Gwin and the transport McCawley.

Among U.S. naval officers in the Pacific is always the hope that one of the offensive steps will aggravate the Jap into sending out his battleships and carriers. They are confident that the Pacific fleet, aided by growing air power, will come out of any showdown victorious. The Jap has declined to risk it. According to Rear Admiral DeWitt Clinton Ramsey, back in Washington last week from commanding a South Pacific carrier task force, the Jap must save his heavy naval units to protect his long lines of communication. With the retaking of Kiska those lines of communication are threatened from the north.

The strength of the South Pacific fleet was the Navy's own and carefully guarded secret. One clue was the quiet confidence of Navy men. Admiral Ramsey said cryptically : "The situation has improved greatly down there in recent months." He also declared: "Their probable available first-line carrier strength may approach ours at this moment," which was a backhanded way of stating that our carrier strength has grown considerably since dark November 1942, when Japan's carrier strength probably exceeded ours.

What Are We Waiting For? Back from three and a half months in the Pacific, TIME Correspondent Duncan Norton-Taylor had an answer to the question, why do not the Allies start an all-out Pacific push? The answer: they are not able to, nor will they be in the immediate future. Even if enough men and supplies were made available in the Pacific, the great factor against the Allies would still be distance, the thousands of miles of water over which the Navy, with too few cargo ships and transports, must carry supplies and men.

Main Allied South Pacific base lies at the end of a 6,000-mile supply line across the Pacific Ocean. From there it takes cargo ships another three and a half to four days, zigzagging through sub-infested waters, to reach advance bases. The Munda push, small as it was compared to the invasion of Sicily, required months of preparation. The Allies were able to use 3,267 bottoms in the Mediterranean. The Navy had to make the best of a few score preparing for the Munda operation, shuttling them back & forth to move a load that could have been transported in one haul by a big merchant fleet. Concluded Correspondent Norton-Taylor:

"Instead of being able to make one swoop, the Navy has to carry dribbles of men and material to the rim of its positions, housing, feeding and protecting them meanwhile, until it has enough accumulated to launch an attack. In the Southwest area General MacArthur is circumscribed by the same lack of shipping. Australia is 7,500 miles from San Francisco. It is another 1,000-2,000 from Australian unloading points to the New Guinea battlefront.

"We have accomplished what we have in the Pacific with our left hand and our back turned--in the Solomons chiefly with naval and air weapons. Once we can turn our face to the Pacific, the hop-skip to Vella Lavella will look like a pip-squeak. Then strategists can begin to contemplate the kind of spectacular bypassing that will be necessary if we ever expect to reach Tokyo, the kind of massive land invasions necessary to knock the Jap out of his main bases and hold them. Until they can turn around, the Allies will have to be satisfied with keeping the Jap jumping by pinching his protuberances."

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