MYSTERY OF PACIFIC SUPPLIES DEEPENS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 91, 17 April 1943, Page 5

MYSTERY OF PACIFIC SUPPLIES DEEPENS

NO EXTRA PLANES

Allocations Arranged At Casablanca N.Z. Press Association—Copyright Rec. 12.30 NEW YORK, April 16. "General Mac Arthur will receive air reinforcements only to the extent necessary to implement the Southern Pacific plans as developed at Casablanca. These plans will govern general operations in the Australian and other Pacific areas for the next several months."

This statement was made by the United Press Washington correspondent quoting official sources. The correspondent adds that General Mac Arthur was appraised of these plans and the officials in Washington are at a loss to understand his plea for more supplies. The planes promised by the Secretary of War, Mr. H. L. Stimson, are those allotted to the South-west Pacific at the recent Washington conference, he says, and do not constitute any additional allocation.

While the majority of American papers continue to stress the need for the rapid delivery of additional war supplies, particularly combat aircraft, to the South-west Pacific some commentators are frankly sceptical of the urgency of Australia's plea.

"The divergence of views expressed in Washington and Australia creates an unfortunate state of doubt and consequently apprehension," writes Dewitt Mackenzie, Associated Press war commentator. "Washington believes the Japanese operations in the Southern Pacific have passed from the offensive to aggressive defence. If the Allies at this critical juncture divert any considerable amount of their striking power from Europe to hit Japan they might be handing Hitler a free ticket to victory." No "Waves" of Planes The Australian Minister of External Affairs, Dr. Evatt, has deprecated general American misconceptions of Allied striking power in the Southern Pacific. He referred particularly to American Press accounts of Allied aircraft attacking "in waves."

"The waves might consist of only three or four bombers," said Dr. : Evatt. "Two bombers have been described by American papers as 'a wave of aircraft' Eighty tons is the greatest weight of bombs dropped in any one raid in the south-west Pacific—not very much as compared with the 1000-ton raids on German cities. Our heaviest raid on Rabaul was made by only 37 aircraft." Dr. Evatt added that Australia's casualties in the war were proportionately higher than those of any other United Nation, except New Zealand. The question was not whether Australia was receiving as much aid as she could wish for her defence, but whether the fruits of Allied production were at all times being directed to securing the maximum dividend of enemy loss.

Muddling Alleged "The whole mess of the Pacific smells of muddling and bad management, with a whiff of politics thrown in," says, the New York Daily Mirror in an outspoken editorial. "It is a supreme demonstration of the national need for, firstly, a true high command, which will run our two great wars in a manner to win the people's respect and confidence; secondly, a proper realisation of air power as a strategic weapon of final decision; and, thirdly, the utter divorcement of politics and any shadow or suspicion of politics from the grim Business of fighting a global struggle to determine our very survival as a Great Power.

"The Washington attitude thinks that Japan won't hit us while we are down, and in the meantime General Mac Arthur and a fly swatter can hold Australia and a vast number of islands against the most brutal, most aggressive warrior race in modern history. The Washington attitude now bears down on a new tangent—the studied, if not inspired, implication that the mounting appeals for aid from the Southwest Pacific represent only a complaining chorus, probably staged for effect, and that there is really no danger. The tangent has received the official Dlessing of the Secretary for the Navy, Colonel Knox, who said there was no indication of a Japanese naval threat against Australia. Within a day General MacArthur revealed the presence of huge enemy concentrations at Truk and Rabaul. General Mac Arthur's facts are unquestionable, as their integrity has been established by on-the-spot reconnaissance. How pitifully he has been supplied to meet the menace is just beginning to be appreciated.

"Censorship prevents the publication of figures, but none even in Washington disputes the statement that General Mac Arthur has been handicapped by an appalling shortage of planes. Mr. Stimson's promise that General Mac Arthur will be given more supplies, particularly aircraft, is itself an admission that he has not been properly supplied." The Daily Mirror advocates the creation of a high command of a single Department to replace the present War and Navy Departments, giving equal representation to air, land and sea power. Such a command, says the paper, would not tolerate the present ridiculous division of the Pacific war into "a navy show and an army show."