The General's Little Blitz

General Douglas MacArthur demonstrated in New Guinea that he is a great offensive commander. In less than three weeks he gobbled up most of the Huon Peninsula. In twelve days he enveloped and captured Lae. Six days later he swept around Finschhaven, 70 miles beyond Lae on the Huon Gulf. His airborne Australians attacked inland. His seaborne Australians landed on the coast above Finschhaven, with mortar fire and bayonet established a bridgehead and seized Finschhaven airport. At week's end the fall of Finschhaven itself was imminent, and the Japs were reduced to a few last toe holds in eastern New Guinea.

The General's swift little blitz was bitter work for his Australians, who had some support from a few U.S. troops.

They sweated it out in mangrove swamps and jungles so thick that one force of Pioneers, unopposed, could make only four miles in two days. Enemy resistance was spasmodic but fierce. Japs, as before, had to be dug out of holes. Japs leaped from the dark tangled jungles on stretcher-bearers carrying wounded. As on Attu, Japanese hugged grenades, blew themselves and their attackers to bits.

MacArthur's offensive proved that trained men and modern equipment, skillfully employed, could rout the Japs in their own jungles. The attack had a precise pattern. MacArthur, less than a year ago converted to air power, used it masterfully. His planes pinned down the Japs at the bases from which they might otherwise have launched counterblows. Airborne infantry and amphibious forces caught the Japs in one trap after another. Bombers and artillery, concentrating on the Japs' encircled positions, pulverized them before Allied troops moved in. The enemy scattered and fled or died. Up to this week some 6,300 Jap dead had been counted. Given a free hand by MacArthur, Lieut. General George Kenney turned his Fifth Air Force against Madang, 200 miles beyond Finschhaven.

With the capture of Finschhaven, MacArthurs's forces will be separated by only 70 miles of water from horn-shaped New Britain, which points at New Guinea. Liberators in one raid last week pounded the horn's point with 94 tons of bombs--a heavy raid for that theater. Kenney's fighters flew 250 miles from their base to strafe enemy shipping and installations in , the horn's curve. At the horn's far end stands Rabaul, the enemy's key position in the area and the logical climax of the General's blitz.

But there was a limit to MacArthur's campaign, no matter how well fought. Without greater reserves of men, materiel and, ships than he appeared to have last week, his blitz would stall and die. About that limit, and the reasons for it, General MacArthur had something to say last week (see below).

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