Solution

The Joint Chiefs of Staff settled the argument last week about who would be overall boss of the Pacific war. The boss will be the Joint Chiefs of Staff. They will continue to run the show from Washington. Directly responsible to the Joint Chiefs for "conducting specific operations" will be General of the Army Douglas MacArthur and Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz, with a third partner--Hap Arnold of the Army Air Forces.

Army General Arnold will be not the least important member of the operating firm. He is himself one of the Joint Chiefs (the others: George Marshall, Ernest King, the President's Fleet Admiral William Leahy). His Pacific assignment is to boss the virtually autonomous, global Twentieth Air Force B-29s. As chief of the Army Air Forces he will also command smaller Army bombers. The theorists who believe that a nation can be brought to its knees by airpower may get another chance to prove it. Congested, inflammable Japan is an excellent laboratory.

In setting up the joint land-sea commands of MacArthur and Nimitz, Washington decided that there was no longer any need for a Supreme Commander in the Pacific. Army and Navy forces can now agree on objectives. The Jap fleet, hacked to pieces in three historic days off the Philippines last October, mortally hurt last week, will never again be able to divert the Navy from close support of amphibious landings. The Navy has virtually completed its main and traditional task--to seek out the enemy's fleet and destroy it. For husky, white-haired Chester Nimitz the rest of the job is mostly ferrying the Army and Marines to the beaches, helping to beat down the remnants of Jap airpower.

For Douglas MacArthur, who has experienced more of the ups & downs of war than any other U.S. general, the assignment sets the stage for the climax to a historic career. Regarded by Admiral Halsey and many another fighting man as the ablest general of World War II, General of the Army MacArthur will have a field of immense scope for his strategic and tactical brilliance. And millions of his fellow-countrymen who know little of the art of war would be well pleased to see him take, as symbol of full surrender, the Mikado's sword.

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