Evening Post THURSDAY, AUGUST 19, 1943. FROM PEARL HARBOUR TO WEWAK

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 43, 19 August 1943, Page 4

Evening Post THURSDAY, AUGUST 19, 1943. FROM PEARL HARBOUR TO WEWAK

An aeroplane that cannot go up, and a submarine that cannot go down, are fair game for their enemies. International Law, shadowy on most points, does not pretend to outlaw sitting shots; and it is indeed the dream of airmen and anti-submarine men to catch the enemy on the surface — whether on the surface of the ground or of the sea—and to end his flying or diving career once and for ever. The onus is not on the shootist; the onus is on the side that is caught sitting; he who sits does so at his peril. In an attempt to give grounded aeroplanes time to ascend and to defend themselves in their own "natural" fighting element, radio apparatus has been developed for the detection and location of approaching enemy aircraft. This detection system is not a simple and cheap device. Whether it is practicable to establish effective radiolocation services throughout wide expanses 'of an insular defensive line, such as Japan holds in the Pacific, we do not know. But it is quite clear that the destruction of well over a hundred Japanese aeroplanes on the ground at Wewak is a disaster for the enemy, who has paid a heavy price for not being able to guard against surprise, and for the bad luck of being caught sitting.

"Nothing," reports General MacArthur, "is so helpless as an aeroplane on the ground." Almost as helpless were the United States battleships and other warships caught moored in port at Pearl Harbour hy Japanese aeroplanes on Sunday, December 7, 1941; and the United States Navy paid a price on that day that makes the Wewak damage look small. But the American airmen, ever remembering Pearl Harbour, are striking almost daily to even the score; and the 120 Japanese aeroplanes which they destroyed at Wewak, plus 50 severely damaged, are a considerable contribution to the balancing of the account that was opened in 1941 with such a heavy American debit. Concerning Wewak Mac Arthur says: "It was a crippling blow at an opportune moment. ... In war, surprise is deqisive." There are, of course, two kinds of surprise, political and military. The Japanese raid on Pearl Harbour in 1941 was a political surprise amounting to international treachery. Japan not only did not scruple to take a sitting shot. She also did not scruple to violate a sanctuary (the sanctuary of peace) in order to pour death upon the naval craft sitting at their moorings. So it does not lie in the mouth of Japan to complain because her aeroplanes have been smitten on the ground by virtue of a genuine military surprise. Her hundred-odd machines have been lost as fairly as the hundred that she lost at sea in defence of the totally destroyed Bismarck Sea convoy.

Since Pearl Harbour, the Americans have on various occasions intercepted Japanese blows—blows poised or blows descending. Brilliant interceptions at sea have sunk scores of Japanese ships and warships; and Japanese offensive air squadrons have been intercepted and have been put off their target with heavy losses. And it would seem that this Wewak battle also assumed the character of an Allied intercepting operation, for the Wewak aerodrome was found packed with aeroplanes "parked wing-tip to wing-tip," apparently concentrated there "preparatory to striking a decisive blow against the Allied forces south of Salamaua, and elsewhere in the New Guinea area." Over a hundred of these aeroplanes that sat. there in order to soar will soar no more; they were about to take part in "the opening battle for air supremacy in New Guinea," hut now they will rank as no more than a minus entry in Tokio's records—an entry that may decide the battle before it has begun, being, as Mac Arthur says, "a crippling blow." Numerically, he adds, "the opposing forces were about equal in strength, but one was in the air and the other on the ground." To ijiaintain air equality, Japan must make good her losses from limited aeroplane reserves, and must transport oil and oil products for immense distances. Japan's oil centre, Balik Papan, is now, like Rumania's Ploesti, subject to air attack; and Japan's shipping losses do not abate. Yet she condemns herself to "holding up the dumb-bell" of an oil-consuming war at extreme arm's length, across thousands of Pacific Ocean miles. To this, bMr. Churchill has said, there is a limit.