THE SOUTH PACIFIC

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 78, 1 May 1943, Page 4

THE SOUTH PACIFIC

HALF-TIME SPELL GUADALCANAR PROVING GROUND (Official War Correspondent, N.Z.E.F,) j A South Pacific Base, April 22. The war in the Pacific has reached a stage which appears to the layman observer like the half-time spell in a hard football game. The two teams, each having licked tis wounds and regained its strength in varying degrees, are waiting for the whistle to blow and the game to resume. But the question everybody is asking is this: Who has the whistle? The present lull is a normal phenomenon of warfare —the same calm between the storms that characterised the fighting in North Africa, but here it has a special significance in that the nature of the next storm may hold the answer to the much-debated question of whether the United Nations plan a large-scale offensive in the Pacific soon, or v.hether little else will be done except to hold what we already have here until the Battle of Europe is over. VIEW OF U.S. GENERAL “Holding what we have” could conceivably entail a restricted offensive aimed at neutralising or occupying Japanese bases as far north as Rabaul in order to make our present possessions and line of defence more secure. That is merely a vision of what “could happen" next, and by no means a hint of any strategy that may have been decided for the immediate future. The high command is completely silent about its plans as far as the public is concerned, and nobody seriously expects it to be anything but silent. It contents itself with such logical platitudes as that “w r e hope that the Japanese will continue to suffer air and surface losses to a considerable degree," and that “we shall take the maximum opportunity to strike at the most vulnerable targets which the enemy may present to us.” The spokesman quoted is Lieut.-General Millard F. Harmon, who commands all army ground and air forces in the South Pacific. As this is written, the enemy is on the defensive, but if he follows the reasoning that offence is the best form of defence he may be expected to make a sudden southward thrust from one or more sectors of his line. In the Solomons area there is at the moment no contact between his land and sea forces and our own. and action in the air is almost entirely limited to the regular bombing of Japanese bases by American planes. A recent important exception was the enemy’s attempted 100plane raid on Guadalcanar and Tulagi. with shipping as the target. The fact that at least 39 Japanese aircraft were shot down, with the loss of a mere handful of American machines, reflects the willingness and the ability of our forces to meet such a challenge, and there is no reason to believe that our land and naval units, which have had no action for more than two months, are not equally ready more than to hold their own against whatever surprises the enemy may spring. SUPERIORITY OF ALLIED AIRMEN The superiority of the American and New Zealand flyers on Guadalcanar, and, in general, of their equipment, is an undeniable fact. General Harmon personally estimates, from the results of actions during the past four or five months, that the Japanese pilots are only 60 per cent, as efficient as our own. He says they seem to lack a sufficient lack of training, and they do not appear to develop as rapidly as ours do. But they still have a good “first team” .y,'hicft,4bey are tryipgrto.- maintain and Which,4jie Americans are trying to r iwhiktto.jdown. long struggle for Guadal'caijpg,, Remonstrated most graphically tive. effectiveness of sole co-ordin-between air, land and naval forces/ In that respect it w ? as probably the best proving ground w’hich American forces have had anywhere in this war, and after the bumps of inexperience had been smoothed out they demonstrated that their combination of the three arms was superior to that of the Japanese. The fact that the island was such a proving ground, together with the importance attached to it by both sides, made the battle somewhat more significant than the mere skirmish which it might otherwise have seemed by comparison with action on the Russian front or even in North Africa. If th.ere is to be another Guadalcanar soon, the fighting is certain be on a considerably larger and fiercer scale than it was on the Japanese-nicknamed “Island of Doom." The beginnings of desperation will surely spur the enemy in his efforts to match that three-arms superiority which the Americans proved the hard way on Guadalcanar.