Around the Bismarck Sea

"The Bismarck Sea may not be mine, but it is no longer his and he crosses it at his peril," said Douglas MacArthur a year ago. It had begun to be his a few days before when his Fifth Air Force swooped down on a warship-escorted convoy off New Guinea and sank it to the last ship.

His control seemed cinched last week when 1) a horseless cavalry division made the key of the Admiralty Islands (Los Negros) theirs for keeps and 2) Marines jumped closer to Rabaul, the failing Jap stronghold on New Britain.

Cavalry. Fortnight ago MacArthur sent burly Major General Innis Palmer Swift and his 1st Cavalry Division into a surprise attack on Los Negros, in the center of the Bismarck Sea. Last week "Bull" Swift was able to sit down on Los Negros with a bottle of Japanese lemon pop in his big hand and tell how the job was done.

It had been a tough fight. It would be rugged until the last Jap was off Los Negros. But the main objectives had been captured. Momote airfield, swiftly taken, had been rehabilitated and U.S. fighter craft were operating from its strip in support of forward units. Jap shore batteries on nearby Manus Island had been silenced by Vice Admiral Thomas C. Kinkaid's navy and supply-burdened LSTs were unloading without enemy interference. One of the first Navy shipments: fresh beef to supplement the Army's K-rations.

The airfield was secured following two violent Jap countercharges which dwindled finally into melodramatic suicide. Drunk with beer and saki, the Japs dashed in waves against American machine guns.

Some of the Nips embraced death with a song on their lips, "Deep in the Heart of Texas," which gave wry satisfaction to the Texas cavalrymen who killed them. The survivors of the blast of U.S. fire ended it all by hugging grenades and pulling the pins. Said an American general veteran of the last war, "the strangest thing I have ever witnessed."

Marines. Across the sea some 300 miles, on New Guinea's northern shore, Brigadier General William Rupertus and his 1st Marine Division had been fighting their way in the direction of Rabaul. It was a slow pace. Last week they speeded it up, jumped overwater to a new objective: the airfield and town of Talasea on the Willaumez Peninsula, 170 miles from Rabaul.

Soon Admiral Kinkaid's PT boats will be using Talasea harbor as a base. Meanwhile Kinkaid's navy, composed mostly of small craft, roams the Bismarck Sea at will, bears down with flaming guns to silence Jap shore batteries. Even PTs serve prominently in such activities. MacArthur described them as "shelling" several Jap positions. Observers of the heightening South Pacific war concluded that heavier weapons have been added to the PTs' cluster of 50-caliber guns to help exploit the advantages and widening opportunities of the Bismarck Sea.

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