Token Threat

Of all combat arms of Allied power, the Fourteenth Air Force alone stands within striking distance of the soft exposed vitals of the Japanese Empire. The recent arrival of a fleet of four-motored Liberator bombers enabled the Fourteenth Air Force last week to strike harder and deeper than ever before at those vitals.

In the biggest bombing raid thus far launched from Chinese bases, the big Liberators swept out over the blue expanse of the Gulf of Tonkin toward Hainan Island, twelve miles off the southeast tip of China, 1,500 miles southwest of Japan proper. Full-bosomed, oversized nudes, painted on the Liberators' noses by the crews, leered down at the Hainan airdrome, barracks, warehouses and oil-storage tanks where the bombs fell. No defending fighters appeared, ack-ack was weak and inaccurate, and the bombers had suffered no losses when they turned homeward from the blazing targets.

Hainan Island is an important intermediary base for planes en route between Japanese factories and the South Seas. Yet it was practically defenseless: the Japs had stripped interior bases to concentrate defense strength on the outer rim of their sprawling empire. The presence of long-range bombers in China may compel the Japs to reallocate some of their defensive strength to the interior. But, to be telling, bombing raids must be sustained, and in greater force than the Allies have so far been able to assemble and supply in blockaded China.

The supply road to China lies through Jap-held Burma, where the British had failed in their preliminary campaign to win a bridgehead for later operations (TIME, April 19). Last week the Commander of the Fourteenth, Major General Claire Chennault, and his superior in the China theater, Lieut. General Joseph E. Stilwell, undoubtedly included the prospects for reopening Burma in the agenda of their staff talks in Washington.

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