The Noose Tightens

For Japs there was no longer protection from U.S. air power in distance.

They got the final proof last week when B-29 Superfortresses of the Twentieth U.S. Air Force bombed the great Palembang oil refineries in remote southeastern Sumatra in the longest-range air assault of the war. If the B-29s could reach Palembang they could reach anywhere in Japan's homeland islands or in Greater East Asia.

For this mission, a "medium-sized" force of the great bombers flew from a base in the Southeast Asia Command near the equator, about 1,800 miles from the target. (The only Allied fields meeting these specifications are on Ceylon.) The blow was a bitter one for the Japs. Scorched by the Dutch, the refinery had been restored to something like its old capacity (18,000,000 barrels a year), reputedly was turning out aviation fuel as well as other petroleum products desperately needed by the enemy. Superfortressmen reported they had hit it fairly and squarely, thought it might take a year to put it back together again.

Tinder-Hearted City. The same night, from a base in China, another force of Superfortresses made the first incendiary raid on Japan. Target: Nagasaki. Flames spread like wildfire through its flimsy wood and paper buildings while demolition bombs thumped down among sea port, naval-station and manufacturing installations.

The B-29 crews took pains to make it a precision job. The big craft were over the city for an hour and a half. As at Palembang, bombermen reported antiaircraft fire and fighter opposition "weak to moderate." Losses for both attacks: three B-29s missing.

Back to the Philippines. While Navy carrier-based aviation eased up its blistering pace the Empire was hit from both west and east by Army bombers in a foretaste of what was to come as new bases, now taken, were built up. For the first time since General MacArthur was evacuated from Mindanao to Australia, U.S. heavy bombers flew over the southern Philippines in force. Davao, principal seaport and military base of the southern Philippines, was attacked for three nights running and on odd nights thereafter by Lieut. General George C. Kenney's Liberators.

Far to the west, Major General L. Claire Chennault's Liberators smashed at Japanese shipping on the Whangpoo near Shanghai. Northeast of the Philippines the Volcano Islands, halfway between the southern Marianas and Tokyo, were raided by Major General Willis Hale's Liberators from new bases on Saipan. Hale's Seventh Air Force heavies also smashed at the Bonins, still closer to Tokyo. From the north Aleutian-based bombers attacked the Kurils.

There was no peace for the Japs anywhere. The noose of aerial bombardment, from every point of the compass, was drawing tight.

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