Rabaul Pinchhed

On Christmas, only ten days after the landing at Arawe (TIME, Dec. 27), General Douglas MacArthur sent forth his second invasion fleet to New Britain, Jap rampart island in the Southwest Pacific. Arawe had been an Army party; there had been thin opposition, about 30 U.S. dead. The new landing was a bigger show, with the Navy as star performer for the first time in General MacArthur's Southwest Pacific theater.

From New Guinea a convoy of cruisers, destroyers and amphibious craft, led by Vice Admiral Thomas C. Kinkaid, Southwest Pacific naval chief, slid into the night, crossed the waters to Cape Gloucester on New Britain's western tip. Early in the morning after Christmas, naval guns pummeled the dim Jap shore, waves of Army Liberators and Mitchells raked the enemy's defenses, laid a screen of TIME, JANUARY 3, 1944 smoke bombs. Minutes later the first landing barge hit the beach. Out spilled U.S. Marines, tough veterans of Guadalcanal, under the command of Major General William H. Rupertus.

Within two hours the Americans had a solid hold on two beachheads, one on each side of Cape Gloucester. The Japs offered negligible ground resistance; apparently they were surprised. Their fortifications had been softened by 3,500 tons of bombs dumped on the Cape Gloucester area in almost daily raids since Dec. 1--the most sustained aerial attack of the Southwest Pacific war. Too late to hinder the American landing, the enemy sent over strongly escorted medium and dive bombers. At a cost of 61 planes, the Jap air arm sank one U.S. ship, damaged three others, shot down seven U.S. planes.

Prize: An Airfield. From their beachheads the Marines plunged along jungle trails to the main Jap positions. At Cape Gloucester the Japs had hacked a pattern of runways through the coconut groves, had built a staging point for barges bound from Rabaul, on New Britain's northeast tip, to outposts in northern New Guinea.

The American attack ruptured this supply line, gave the U.S. Navy dominance in the waters between New Britain and New Guinea. But General MacArthur's communique made clear that the chief prize was Cape Gloucester's runways: in Allied hands, they "will shortly bring the Kavieng-Admiralty Islands area within reach of our land-based air attack."

This was the first official hint of what may well be Douglas MacArthur's plan to reduce Rabaul, the Jap Southwest Pacific stronghold. The Admiralties lie on Rabaul's western flank. Kavieng, at the top of New Ireland Island, lies 150 miles to Rabaul's north, is a way station from Truk. Allied bases on the Admiralties and New Ireland, combined with bases already established in the Solomons, New Guinea and New Britain, will mean the encirclement of Rabaul. Last week the air-and-sea pincers were pressed from the Solomons, where a 17-months' campaign entered its final, victorious phase. U.S. Liberator bombers, Hellcat and Corsair escorts mauled one of Rabaul's five airfields, shot down 71 to 90 planes, left behind 15 U.S. planes. A U.S. carrier force ranged to Kavieng, sank a Jap destroyer, two cargo ships.

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