Still Clinging

A B-25 bomber, droning through the Arctic sky one day last week, spotted a Japanese freighter where no Jap freighter ought to be. Said the Navy's laconic communique: "The ship was left burning and was later seen to sink." The Navy offered no conjecture as to what the ship was doing 110 miles north and east of Kiska, in the Bering Sea.

Logical supply route to Kiska from Japan is to the south and west (where a Consolidated Liberator bomber sighted and bombed another cargo ship on the same day). Possible explanation for the B-25's victim being where she was: she was trying to slip into Kiska from the north, in the fog-shrouded Bering Sea where U.S. planes would be less likely to see her. But other Jap cargo ships were luckier. At least two in the past fortnight have landed supplies for the Jap force which still clings to the tail of the Aleutians. On their next raid U.S. pilots, who had been having their own way over Kiska Harbor and who had begun to hope that they would dislodge the Japs, were met by a swarm of newly arrived Zeros.

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