Closer To The Goal

The brain center of the war against Japan moved closer to the objective last week. Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz issued his 244th communique from "Advanced Headquarters, Pacific Ocean Areas," and correspondents were permitted to say that it was "several thousand miles west of Pearl Harbor." Nimitz had previously mentioned Saipan and Guam as possible sites for his vast command.

The 21st Bomber Command, whose B-29 Superfortresses fly from Saipan fields, had already moved its headquarters to Guam. The 21st had far outgrown its elder brother, the 20th, based in India and China, and burly, black-jowled Curtis E. LeMay (at 38 the Army's youngest major general) had flown from Chengtu to Guam to take over. Haywood S. ("Possum") Hansell, a specialist in planning, was recalled to Washington.

The carriers of Admiral William F. Halsey's Third Fleet, after weeks of rampaging up & down the coast of Asia and its guardian islands, had no new action to report. The spotlight of fleet activity was on flyspeck Sulphur Island (Iwo Jima), mid way between Guam and Tokyo, where the enemy persisted in repairing bomb-pocked airstrips in order to fly off planes against the B-29 base at Saipan. For an hour and a half, a 16-inch-gun battleship, heavy cruisers and destroyers poured shells into the 2 1/2-by-5-mile island's airfields, gun emplacements and docks. Three enemy ships were destroyed. Earlier the same day, B-29s and B-24s had dumped almost 200 tons of bombs on the nuisance raiders' lair. The little island was getting a lot of attention.

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