Evening Post WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 17. 1943. SEA BATTLE OFFER TO JAPAN

Evening Post, Volume CXXXV, Issue 40, 17 February 1943, Page 4

Evening Post WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 17. 1943. SEA BATTLE OFFER TO JAPAN

A slight lift in the fog of war covering the Solomons section of the Southwest Pacific enables the character of the February fighting to be glimpsed, and gives the lie once more to Japanese over-statements of Allied naval losses. Tokio has so damaged its own credibility by persistent lying that its periodical announcement of Allied naval catastrophes no longer casts a cloud. The picture now created by the United States Navy Department's statement, and by supporting evidence, is a picture of great expectations rather than of great happenings. Both belligerents paraded in Solomons and New Britain waters a heavy array of naval strength, air-sup-ported. An all-in sea-and-air battle would not have been an unequal fight. But when Admiral Halsey offered battle, the Japanese fleet did not take advantage of his offer. Even his care-fully-calculated insults thrown recently at the Mikado did not cause the Japanese admiral to run amuck. The conclusion, therefore, forces itself that Japan's suicide tactics do not apply to a fleet which has been warned by experience—Midway Island, Coral Sea, and Solomons experiences—and which has been forced by attrition to dilute its courage with caution. Instead of exhibiting emotional fanaticism, and a mad desire to save face at any price, the Japanese admiral shows that he calculates on finding later on a better battle opportunity than that offered him by Halsey.

As soon as the Americans made up their mind that Japan would not commit the two fleets to a decisive test, they accepted the theory that the enemy was concerned only with evacuating Japanese from Guadalcanal Island and with hindering the arrival of American reinforcements. The result was a series of actions more resembling dogfights than a pitched battle—dogfights in which the larger naval units stood more in danger from air attack than from the gunfire of equivalent surface units. The United States navy admits the loss of a heavy cruiser and a destroyer, both victims of air attack. On the other side of the account, the U.S. navy claims to have sunk two destroyers certainly and four more probably, as well as damaging six others. In an evacuating operation, carried on by the Japanese at night, or in the daytime with heavy air support, their destroyers could be expected to carry the-heavy end of i the stick. Other items in the account are three motor torpedo-boats lost by the Allies, and three Japanese ships sunk or damaged in addition to the twelve destroyers. In the air, the 'Allies claim to have destroyed 60 enemy aircraft and to have lost 22, jup to February 4, the date of the I Japanese collapse on Guadalcanal. According to Washington, "all the vesj sels sunk, except the motor torpedoI boats, were attacked from the air." Neither side nowadays seems to be over-anxious to place battleships in positions highly vulnerable to air attack. Japan cannot afford to. America may afford to, when naval construction has given her superiority in heavy ships. In the meanwhile, the Mikado goes | unavenged, and Admiral Halsey's fighting appetite remains incompletely i satisfied. Whether he will rub it in by | hoisting a broom to his masthead is not clear; but he must be tolerably certain in his own mind that the big clash is not prevented and is merely postponed. If Japan continues to refuse to carry the fight to us—and if Sir Keith Murdoch is correct in his declaration that Japan has never intended to invade Australia or New Zealand —what will happen? Although Mr. Curtin's plea for more help quickly is less heard, that of Chungking is heard more frequently. In the "New York HeraldTribune" Major G. F. Eliot seeks to answer the question "What will happen?" by offering an offensive plan-j which will be too modest in its material requirements to conflict with the priority of the European war. "There is now," he writes, "a new opportunity for taking the offensive in the Pacific for which not vast, but a sufficient number of men, ships, and planes are needed." A sufficiency which avoids vastness should satisfy any moderate appetite. If supporters lof the policy of "Germany first" still contend that the not vast demand of Major Eliot constitutes "unwarranted detachments from our strength," the Major's answer is, in effect, that all the fronts are one front. "By this time," he contends, "the Japanese would have attacked Russia, and probably India," but for the detachments from their strength caused by the Allies' Southwest Pacific campaign. Thus Guadalcanal becomes a lever in the defence of Russia from Japan, and therefore in defeating Germany first—a neat bit of military logic. With this unifying sentence, the American writer annihilates distance and merges all war fronts: "Viewing the accomplishments of Russia and North Africa, we must remember that the immobilisation of Japanese sea and air power in the Pacific is largely responsible for these blessings."

There are, of course, other American views. New York reports "considerable Singulation in naval circles as to whether any trickery lies behind the Japanese decision to withhold their strength." Another commentator is on solid ground when he points oui that the Allies' offensive-defensive in the South-west Pacific has achieved the immediate purpose of protecting the life-line connecting New Zealand and Australia with America. It needs no straining of cause-and-effect mechanism to link Halsey and Mac Arthur directly with the life-line.

The large-scale offensive against Japan is another question. Its Chinese aspects are now considerably in the limelight. The continental strategy against Japan still remains the most hopeful. At the same time, improvement in aircraft-carriers and in the aeroplanes they carry receives attention today in a Washington message, which holds out the hope that the contest between aircraft sea-carried arid aircraft land-based may still have surprises in store.