MACARTHUR STRATEGY OUTWITTED JAPANESE

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 197, 20 August 1943, Page 3

MACARTHUR STRATEGY OUTWITTED JAPANESE

BY-PASSING OF VILA

Hint Of Departures From Island-Hopping War N.Z. Press Association —Copyright Rec. 10 a.m. NEW YORK, Aug. 19. A clear summary of Allied strategy in the Southern Pacific has been given by Colonel Laurence Sherman, assistant-Chief of Staff to MajorGeneral Millard Harmon, United States Air Commander in the Southwest Pacific. Colonel Sherman, who has just returned from the combat area, told a correspondent of the New York Times that the Americans were building up a chain of air bases which would threaten the entire Japanese New Guinea-Rabaul defence line. He said the American occupation of Vella Lavella, by bypassing Kolombangara Island, in tne Central Solomons, might prove to De costly for the Japanese, whose dwindling air strength would De further split by the recent smashing air blows against Wewak. Blow Expected at Vila After the capture of Munda, said Colonel Sherman, it was generally assumed that General Mac Arthur would strike against Vila, on Kolombangara, across the narrow waters of Kula Gulf. The Japanese, therefore, reinforced Vila. But instead of hurling his troops against Vila, the only feasible land approach to which was covered by Japanese guns, General Mac Arthur seized Vella Lavella almost without a fight and he was now in a position to choke off enemy reinforcements ootn to Kolombangara and New Georgia. The Japanese, whose custom it is. to build inferior coral-surfaced airfields on islands, had not constructed an airfield on Vella Lavella, but tne Americans, who lay steel mats, will certainly build a fighter-strip on their new-acquisition. Munda airfield, Colonel Sherman pointed out, waff already in operation and would afford fighter protection for our bombers based on Gruaoaicanar in their attacks on the enure Bougainville area, where the Japanese' have constructed four or nve new aerodromes. Fighter Pl ane j> could also protect our bombersim their attacks on Rabaul which was the crucial anchor of the Japanese defence line.

Hinting at further Allied departures from island-hopping warfare, Colonel Sherman said the enemy base at Rekata Bay, in the northern portion of Ysabel Island, might be "another by-pass proposition." He added that the Allied air victory at Wewak had practically knocked out the known Japanese air strength in that area and henceforth the depleted enemy air force in the New Britain-New Ireland sector must divide in an effort to protect the enemy's New Guinea bases. A high-ranking staff officer of the United States Pacific Fleet ■ told a North American Newspaper Alliance correspondent, Mr. Ira Wolfert, that in his opinion the Japanese committed "a mortal error" when, they attacked Hawaii and the Philippines at the outset of the war. He explained that, if the Japanese had by-passed the United States entirely, they might have gone down the Pacific all the way via Oceania and perhaps taken Australia and New Zealand, "while we the war fighting the isolationists, i