PRONGS BLUNTED

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 235, 5 October 1942, Page 3

PRONGS BLUNTED

JAP. PACIFIC DRIVES

Allied Air Ascendancy Is

Greatest Factor Special Australian Correspondent United Press Association—Copyright Rec. 1.30. SYDNEY, this day. The newest Japanese land reverse in New Guinea has effectively blunted the second prong of Japan's three-prong South Pacific offensive. The Australian success in the Owen Stanley Ranges is heartening less for its direct strategic implications, which may still be small, than for its valuable fillip to morale and for the fresh evidence that the United Nations are at last discovering tactics to defeat Japan's jungle fighters.

The New York Times' military analyst, Hanson Baldwin, describes the recent reverses of the Japanese land troops, who attempted to capture the Henderson (Guadalcanar) airfield in the Solomons as the blunting of the first prong. This has been closely followed by the blunting of the second prong, feeling its way down the Owen Stanley Range toward Port Moresby, "The key to Australia." The third prong of Japan's South Pacific offensive appears to have remained stationary in the Southern Gilbert Islands, menacing Fiji. Solomons a Bastion

Hanson Baldwin contends the Solomons are the key to the entire Japanese South Pacific strategy. He says: "The American held part of the south-eastern Solomons stands like a bastion in the path of the enemy operations."

The operations in New Guinea are of secondary importance to those being conducted behind a screen of secrecy in the Solomons, where the outcome of the entire Pacific war may well be determined, according to Baldwin. The struggle in this theatre is developing on a vast scale, and the operations are drawing more and more on Japanese strength. Unless she is able to win a major victory in the Solomons Japan may eventually find it impossible to defend herself in the South Seas and simultaneously conduct major offensives in other theatres, but that time has not yet come.

Baldwin believes Japan still maintains a slight naval superiority as well as having the great advantage or interior position and shorter lines of communication. The most hopeful sign, he says, is Japan's evident shortage of aircraft, in the absence of which Japan cannot expel the Americans from the Solomons without great risk and probably serious losses.

Successful Dynamic Defence

"When we undertake an island stepping offensive northward we must be prepared for similar risks and similar losses," Baldwin adds. The present Allied operations in this theatre are merely illustrations of successful dynamic defence—with a wholeheated offensive still some way off."

Ajr ascendancy for the Allied Nations is the most hopeful feature °l recent operations throughout the Pacific, declares the Sydney Morning Herald editorially to-day The newspaper comments: "The Solomons fighting is consuming aircraft at a rate which must be alarming to the Japanese. Without air cover Japan's remote conquests will become a trap for her shipping, and of naval or merchant ships Japan to-day can have none to spare "