Evening Post THURSDAY, JANUARY 27, 1944. AIR-WAR SIMPLIFIES ISLAND-HOPPING

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 22, 27 January 1944, Page 4

Evening Post THURSDAY, JANUARY 27, 1944. AIR-WAR SIMPLIFIES ISLAND-HOPPING

Nowhere in the several theatres of the air-war has the Allied side secured as great an ascendancy over its enemy as in the Solomon Islands-New GuineaNew Britain region. It would be not astonishing, therefore, to hear that the air arm is proving a greater winner in that part of the world than in any other part. \ln the absence of a detailed survey of the whole undertaking, no comparison is. possible-between the air campaign;in the Pacific islands and the air campaign-in, say, Italy; still less is there any comparative basis as between the clash of the belligerents in the Pacific Ocean and the totally different effort that is being made to bomb out of the war a closely-settljd and industrialised country like Germany. But to the layman it certainly- seems that Allied air mastery in the Pacific is winning more prizes than it has yet won in the last half-year in Italy. Is ,this impression due to the circumstance that we hear more about our own air exploits in our nearby war than we hear of parallel events in the distant Mediterranean since the Malta epic ended? Or is it a fact that the Allied air ascendancy over the Japanese is much sharper—man for man, machine for machine—than any ascendancy which quality and numbers have yet brought to the Allied air forces as against the Germans? And that -question raises another question: whether the Japanese air arm is proving to be Japan's greatest weakness. The air battle reports from the Pacific are so overwhelmingly in our favour that only the fear of a mixed metaphor cautions us against the conclusion that Japan's air arm is Japan's Achilles heel.

Tojo's appeal to the Japanese home front to produce more, especially in the air departments, seems to mean anxiety for better machines as well as for more of them. If To jo accepts the Allies' figures of the total weekly or monthly air losses, and especially the high proportion of Japanese losses to Allies' losses, he must be appalled. The | following arresting sentence, published today, is typical of what the Allies have been reporting for more than a year: "The latest Rabaul [New Britain] action brought the Japanese losses there in the past four weeks to 284 aircraft destroyed, with 89 'others claimed as probable; in that time the Allied losses have been 56 aeroplanes." Herein lies a terrific tactical inferiority of Japan. The tactical superiority of the Allies in the air over the Pacific has dominated, events below it, and seems to have actually created a new strategy. In most other war areas outflanked troops of the enemy can get away unless our army deals directly with them, but in the Pacific war area today an Allied garrison can actually share an island with a Japanese garrison, because the cannot ! depend with any certainty on either supply or evacuation. Practically the Japanese can be left to "stew in. their own juice" because air action in the first place, and naval action in the second place, have literally cut their claws. New Zealand's recent visitor, Sir Neville Pearson, thus sums up the change that has come over "islandhopping": "Instead of attempting to capture the whole of an island, effort is now concentrated on the capture of airfields or space on which to construct airfields, leaving the rest of the island to wither away through deprivation of supplies and transport."

When Tojo and his confederates designed the Japanese Pacific insular arc, they lacked the best materials for its roof. And because the Allies' air forces have taken charge of the roof, that other weakness of Japan, weakness in shipping, becomes intensified. Aerial and transport disadvantages together can prove fatal, and Tojo must see that Hitler in the last six months has made a better job of his effort to harden' the "soft underbelly" of Europe than Japan is making of her contract to harden the Pacific arc. The deterioration of Japan's Rabaul stronghold, and of her whole position in New Britain and New Ireland, indicates a vital omission in Japan's war effort—an omission which the Allies hope is beyond her power to make good. She has, however, sufficient time at. her disposal 'to go a long way towards reconstructing her; air effort, provided that her industrial capacity is equal to the undertaking. Germany, as anyone can see, has fought immensely better in Italy than in Tunisia; and if New Britain proves to be Japan's Tunisia there will still be time for the Japanese to strive to get better military results' out of the barriers they may erect nearer home. But when the history of the war comes to be written, it will probably be agreed that Japan's farflung defences were a strategic mistake because they overstrained her air power and her communications. A distant island screen is not a good defence unless there is a strong and continuing t punch behind it. And this fact should be remembered when Canberra conferences talk about island screens. A nation gets ho more out of its defences than it is instantly ready, and willing, to put in.