Hold Them & Wear Them Down

X-Mile Airdrome* near Port Moresby, New Guinea, is no pilot's paradise. It is a flight strip about one mile long, paved with steel mats laid on gravel. The mats are a fairly recent improvement; there was a time when the tricycle landing-geared 6-243 could not be used from X-Mile Field because the nose wheel would sink down in the loose dirt. At the lower end of the field is a graveyard of cracked-up and salvaged planes. When the bombers lift their wings over this they are quickly out over the open sea.

X-Mile Field is a barren place. Its main building is a grass-roofed, gravel-floored operations hut, where crews are briefed before their combat missions and interviewed when they return. A stilt-legged control tower stands near the upper end, from which take-off and landing signals are blinked to the bomber crews. There are no hangars; planes are serviced, bombed up and repaired in revetments around the field, built up with 20-ft. walls as a protection against bomb blasts. Beyond the flight strip, on both sides, are low, scrub-covered hills.

The Planes & the Task. Flight strips like X-Mile Field are one indication of the state of Allied air power in the Southwest Pacific theater. The weight of bombs dropped in a recently stepped-up campaign against the Japanese in the area is another. Last week the heavy bombers of Lieut. General George C. Kenney, Allied air chief in the Southwest Pacific, made a record raid on the Japanese stronghold of Lae, 180 mi. north and across the mountains from Moresby. The record: 36 tons of bombs, or the equivalent of twelve fully loaded Flying Fortresses.

But the size of the air force at his disposal is no indication of the size of the task facing cocky, fighting little Lieut. General Kenney. His targets stretch over a curve reaching from Jap-held Timor in The Netherlands Indies to the Solomon Islands. Within this 4,000-mi. arc the Japanese have concentrated more air power and troops than anywhere else in the Far Eastern war zone except in China. They may have an offensive thrust in mind: to clean the Allies out of Australia's outlying islands and launch an invasion of Australia itself. Or they may be building up a defense against Allied designs on the ladder of islands which marks the road to Japan.

Whatever their purpose, it was up to Allied war power to do what it could to stop them--and it was on the record that in his last major engagement (Bismarck Sea), Kenney had used exactly 136 planes.

The Hot Spot. Most of the Allied raids which trip-hammered the Japanese last week were flown from the Port Moresby area. Most of these were directed against the New Guinea base of Lae and its surrounding airfields, and against Rabaul, pivot point of Japanese power in the New Guinea-New Britain theater. For this there was a double reason:

P: With their hold on New Guinea, consolidated last winter by MacArthur's victory at Buna-Gona (TIME, Jan. 4), the Allies had driven a wedge into the Japanese line facing northeastern Australia and gained a base for air operations against all supplies coming into this theater;

P: The New Guinea foothold held possibilities of a further Allied thrust into the Jap's defensive wall at Rabaul.

Guadalcanal and the occupation of the Russell and Ellice Islands were preliminary steps for such a drive, assuring supply lines to Allied Southwest Pacific bases. The capture of Lae and Salamaua on New Guinea would clear another enemy threat.

Kenney's job now is to hold the Japanese down on their island bases; and, within the limits of his capabilities, to soften them up and chip away at their air power for a possible amphibious campaign against Rabaul. With the few planes he has he is doing the holding; with the promise of more planes to come, he is plugging away at the chipping job. Already he has made some Japanese airfields around Lae untenable by mightily exert ing his crews. One lone Flying Fortress limped home last week with the tale of a 35-minute fight against 16 Japanese Zeros. In the fight to keep back Japanese reinforcements from this theater, he is being helped by Admiral William Halsey's South Pacific Command (see below).

*Airfields in New Guinea were first named after nearby native villages, but flyers who had trouble remembering local tongue-twisters used milestone numbers showing distance from Port Moresby. Later, some were named after flyers billed in action.

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