PACIFIC BATTLE PLANS

Evening Star, Issue 24990, 8 October 1943, Page 3

PACIFIC BATTLE PLANS

SHORTEST ROAD TO TOKIO THROUGH BURMA AND CHINA NEW YORK, October 7. Air-power is the Allies' most powerful weapon for crushing Japan. This view is contained in a paper read by the planning officer of the United States Army Air Forces, Lieutenantcolonel Clyde Wildman. Army spokesmen say that the paper can be regarded as a statement of the official opinions of the United States War Department, the Air Staff, and the Army Air Forces. In addition to a statement on Allied air-power, Colonel Wildmau made two significant points which may indicate the future of the United Nations' action in the Pacific. He emphasised the formidable but little-realised barriers protecting Japan proper, andi he implied that the quickest and most feasible road to Tokio lay through Burma and China. The views he expressed are widely believed to represent the dominant thoughts of the War Department on Pacific battle plans. Colonel Wildman's report emphasised that the Allies were still 1,000 to 3,000 miles from bases from which sustained bombing operations could be carried out against the enemy's home strongholds, and he pointed out the need for obtaining bombing hases close enough to the Japanese mainland to permit a continuous air attack. Summarising the advantages of the various "-roads to Tokio," he strongly intimated that the War Department favoured an approach via Burma and China.

' Of the Australia-New Guinea approach, Colonel Wildman said: "It is fraught with the time-consuming task of reducing island fortresses stretching one after the other over 2,500 miles before an effectivo air base zone can be reached. Progress from either the South or Central Pacific will be painfully slow, as the Japanese must be literally dug or blasted out of each island." Colonel Wildman also discussed Siberia as a potential base against Japan, but pointed out that unfavourable weather conditions would largely obstruct air operations from this zone.