Wairarapa Times-Age TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 1942. BLOWS THAT WILL TELL.
J^LT! I()l T (jII the total operations involved are described by the United States Navy Department only as a large-scale raid, the attacks made by sea and air units ot the American Fleet on Japanese naval and air bases in the Marshall Islands and on Makindsland, in the Gilbert group are a welcome sequel to the powerful and destructive blow lately struck by American and Dutch forces at an enemy convoy in Macassar Strait. In their combined effect these events hold out prospects of the opening of a new phase in the war in the Pacific. It may be some time yet before the Allied offensive is developed in anything like full strength, but already there is something to set against the setbacks the Allies have suffered in the SouthWestern Pacific and the difficulties by which they are confronted in a number of very important areas.
It is clear that a considerable destruction of Japanese naval auxiliary vessels, aircraft and land installations in the island bases was effected at relatively light cost, but the extent to which the latest blow struck by the American fleet is likely to upset Japanese plans and preparations remains at time of writing a matter of conjecture. While they are believed to have been the immediate starting point of attacks on Wake and Midway islands, and arc important strategic points on the route across the Pacific to New Guinea and the East Indies, the enemy bases attacked in the Marshall and Gilbert groups are important also as possible stepping stones towards other island groups lying east of Australia and north of New Zealand, The damaging blow struck at Japan’s war organisation will be appreciated not least in the British South Pacific Dominions.
The speed with which telling blows of this kind can be multiplied and followed up remains to be determined. It depends, obviously, on the rate at which the Allies can mobilise air and naval forces. It may be seen, however, that in the wide extension of her aggression, which has given her possession for the time being of many islands and of a considerable amount of territory, particularly in the Philippines and Malaya, Japan has laid herself open to attack at many points. Equally in the areas in which she is at present pressing the attack with numerically superior forces—the Philippines, Malaya, Burma and parts of the Netherlands East Indies —and in her bases in widely distributed islands which she already held under mandate or has occupied since the war began, she is dependent on long-distance sea 'communications.
These sea communications have been described as extending from the Japanese main bases like the spokes of a wheel, with the rim of the wheel 2,500. miles distant from the hub. The protection of this vast system of communications, and of widely separated island bases, evidently is a task of enormous magnitude and difficulty. The whole fate of the war in the Pacific may he determined eventually in naval fighting on the grand scale. Even with a decisive contest, or contests of that kind in abeyance, however, it should be- open to the Allies, as light naval and air forces can lie made available, to strike at the enemy at many points and with immensely damaging effect.
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Wairarapa Times-Age, 3 February 1942, Page 2
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552Wairarapa Times-Age TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 1942. BLOWS THAT WILL TELL. Wairarapa Times-Age, 3 February 1942, Page 2
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