CAMPAIGN VIRTUALLY OVER

Evening Star, Issue 25032, 26 November 1943, Page 3

CAMPAIGN VIRTUALLY OVER

JAPS. LOSE MANY PLANES

(Ilec. p.m.) WASHINGTON, Nov. 25

The American aircraft-carrier division covering the operations in the Gilbert Islands yesterday shot down 34 enemy fighters, nine bombers, and three fourengined patrol seaplanes. The carrier division's losses were three fighters and one torpedo bomber. This has been announced in a Navy Department communique, which also reports a raid by Liberators yesterday on the Emiji-Jaluit atoll in the Marshall Islands. Three Japanese floatplanes did not attempt interception. Mopping-up operations on Tarawa, Makin, and Abemama are virtually complete, and few live Japanese remain in the Gilberts. '

NEW LIGHT ON STRATEGY FICTITIOUS MAGARTHUR CONTROVERSY NEW YORK, Nov. 25., " Admiral Nimitz's offensive places the old controversy of Pacific strategy in an entirely new light, for it discloses that the real strategy in this theatre is dictated by the navy,'- says the ' Herald-Tribune's' writer, Mr W r alter Lippmann. _ " What Admiral Nimitz is undertaking now is essentially what the navy has always' intended to do in the war against Japan —gain command of the Western Pacific and make the Japanese island empire subject to American sea power. " The navy never intended to fight the main action against Japan from Australia," he said. "We had to fight from Australia only because our unpreparedness in 1941 compelled us to retreat to Australia. The navy has never agreed to the idea that the main attack against Japan could be launched from the distant . and inconvenient places to which disasters and defeat compelled us to retire.. Thus the whole controversy about the size of the force assigned to General MacArthur has been fictitious, for while the controversy has been aired in Congress and the Press the actual concentration of American power . for the main challenge to Japan has been progressing secretly in another theatre—the theatre where the navy always meant to 'make its main effort."