CARRIERS LED THE WAY INTO THE HEART OF JAPAN'S EMPIRl
be endangered. In July the Soviets were thundering
Into Lithuania, moving up to Warsaw, and heading
tor the great oil center of Ploesti in Romania. In Italy,
Alexander had driven up to the Gothic line on the
approaches to the Po Valley.
But it was at home that Herr Schultz found most
to moan about. Most of his beloved city of Berlin
lay in ruins. Food was growing dangerously short,
and after one of the Allies’ big raids he had to
stand in line for hours just to get some water. Der
Fuehrer’s Gestapo frowned on discussions of these
hardships, and if Herr Schultz openly expressed
fears that Germany might be traveling the path of
M18 he would find himself in a concentration camp.
The number of Germans who, like Schultz, saw
disaster written on the wall grew rapidly after the
invasion; and notable among the “defeatists” were
many generals whose advice Hitler had brushed
aside in favor of his intuition. General von Paulus,
Who was taken by the Russians at Stalingrad,
broadcast from Moscow, along with many other
captured general urging the Germans to over
throw Hitler’s mad leadership.
Inside the Reich a plot brewed to eliminate der
Fuehrer. On July 20 a “clique of criminal elements”
engineered a bombing of a room where Hitler was
conferring with his aides, but Hitler suffered only
aome burns, injuries to a hand and the loss, it was
reported, of his trousers. Goebbels called the es
cape “an act of Providence.”
Hitler then announced the clique would be “ex
terminated quite ruthlessly,” and turned the job
over to Gestapo chief Heinrich Himmler. Colonel
General Ludwig Beck, former chief of the German
General Staff, was announced as “no longer among
living persons, and many other officers were
liquidated.
The Gestapo roamed Berlin, searching for every
one who looked suspicious. Weary Schultz would
have to wait for some other way for the war to end.
BATTLE OF FRANCE, II
TT had been slow going for Bradley on the Nor
mandy peninsula, tortuously working his way
down through the hedgerows which stalled tank
movements and enabled the Nazis to make a stand
behind every field. But during early July he had
a chance to amass new forces and secretly he put
General Patton’s 3rd Army into position to await
a breakthrough. Marshal Montgomery was poised
at Caen to hold off the Nazis while the Americans
swung around the end.
The Yanks got rolling on July 26. Bradley’s 1st
Army with tremendous aerial support tore a hole
in the enemy line and Patton’s tanks raced through.
It was a mad, wild dash. Tanks with whooping
infantrymen astride roared out of St. Lo, one spear
head driving to cut off the Britanny peninsula while
another shot down the road to Rennes.
Air force fighter-bombers—called “Jabo” by the
fearing foe—chopped Nazi rear lines. Pilots carried
maps strapped to their legs and were notified by
radio when the advance changed the bomb line
But Patton soon was out-racing the maps.
The 3rd’s tanks swung around at the Loire rivet
and headed north. There were 300,000 Germans
soutr of the Loire who might have crushed their
reat But Patton counted on the air force to protect
them Every time the Germans tried to attack they
found fighters and light bombers swooping all over
them.
Meanwhile-, the rest of the Allied forces were
squeezing the enemy north of Caen. The Nazis tried
to pull back toward the Seine. A strafing plane
caught Rommel and gave him injuries that resulted
in his death.
Three armies clung to the Nazi heels—the British
Ind under General Miles C. Dempsey, the Canadian
l*t of General Henry D. G. Crerar, and the U. S.
1st under General Courtney H. Hodges. The “Red
Ball” express, a huge fleet of trucks, raced down
the highways in an unending 24-hour a day stream
with oil from a pipeline which had been run under
the channel from England to France.
The Allies almost bagged the retreating Germans
at Falaise-Argentan, but a large part of the enemy
pulled out safely. The rest was badly mauled.
Then another invasion hit the south of France.
Two armies—one American, one French, under the
over-all command of General Jacob Devers—hit
five beaches between Marseilles and Nice and soon
were sweeping up the Mediterranean coast with
strong support from the French underground.
But the main spotlight was on the hectic race in
the north. By August 20 the Allies were at the
Seine. Inside Paris French patriots began slugging
with the Nazi garrison.
In the east the heat was on the Nazis, too. On
August 22 the Russians outflanked Warsaw and
were swinging on to Bucharest. On August 23 the
Romanians jumped out of the war. On August 25
they jumped in again—against Germany.
On this same day a French armored division
roared past the Eiffel Tower and liberated Paris.
Other Allied forces were far beyond the city, now
joyously hysterical, although snipers still swept
streets with machine gun fire. Patton’s spearheads
shot across the Marne and into the World War I
battlefields—Chateau Thierry, Belleau Wood, Sois
sons—and by September 9 Were nearing Metz.
Meanwhile the British had overrun the robot bomb
launching platforms along the coast and were
speeding into Holland. Hodges raced over the Lux
embourg border September 11 and the next day
was in Germany. The U. S. 7th Army, speeding up
from the south, joined Patton’s forces. The Cana
dians fought into Le Havre.
By now supply lines were stretched almost to a
breaking point. Transports and troop carriers took
off from England, filled with five-gallon gasoline
cans to feed tanks and jeeps. But the Allied forces
were too oil-hungry to be satisfied with dribbles.
On September 15, with six armies standing on or
near the formidable Siegfried Line, the general of
fensive slowed to a stop.
Eisenhower decided to try a long-shot plunge
over the line. He sent a special airborne army of
American, British, Dutch and Polish paratrooper*
leaping over the Maas, Waal and Rhine rivers be
hind the enemy in Holland. The paratroops seized
a bridge at Nijmegen and Dempsey’s British rushed
up to hold it. But the English paratroops reaching
for vita^Arnhem on the enemy side of the Rhine
lost out when ferocious counter-attacks closed in
around them.
The road to Germany was not yet wide open.
THE FIGHTING LADY MOVES AHEAD
VlfHILE the Nazis reeled back under pressure from
’ ’ west, east and south, from the air and from
the underground, a devastatingly powerful striking
force was unleashed against the Japanese.
The force was the aircraft carrier, now enthroned
as the queen of the seas, with her escort of battle
ships, cruisers and destroyers.
There were now some 75 carriers in the fleet and
they were virtually free to roam as they pleased.
They had become the forerunners of invasion,
sending off speedy fighters and bombers to soften
up enemy installations, to clear the airfields and
skies of enemy planes, to pound the ground ahead
of invaders scurrying up the beaches, to isolate
battlefields and throw up a shield of bombs and
torpedos against enemy attempts to bring in rein
forcements.
Capture of the Marshalls gave the top carrier
admirals—Marc Mitscher and John S. McCain—
great bases from which to mount new attacks. But
by 1944 America’s naval forces became almost self
sufficient. With a completely new and almost in
credible system of supply trains consisting of tank
ers, storage vessels and floating drydocks, it was
possible for the fighting ships to stay at sea for
months. Meeting a supply train hundreds of miles
from land they could take on oil, ammunition, food,
thousands of conveniences like cigarettes, candy
bars, shaving cream and tooth paste.
The Japanese now could never know where the
carriers would strike, and once a strike started they
could never tell when it might end. The resources
of America’s fleet seemed to be inexhaustible.
On June 11 a tremendous carrier force appeared
off the islands of Saipan, Tinian, Guam, Pagan and
Rota in the Marianas islands, 1,500 miles from
Tokyo. It was the first announced appearance of
Mitscher’s' “Task Force 58,” a fast and mighty
armada with, perhaps 20 carriers, protected by bat
tleships, cruisers and other warships.
For three days torpedo planes, dive bombers and
fighters roared over the islands, slashing through
Three Allied Warriors
Gen. T. A. Blarney
led Australians, was
MacArthur's deputy.
Gen. HOG.
Crerar led the 1st
Canadian Army.
I V\^\ , W
Charles de Gaulle
was leader of Free
french Force*.
strong enemy opposition to attack airfields, supp
dumps, harbors and the ships in them.
On June 15 the Marianas were ripe for invasio
INTO THE MARIANAS
|V/fARINES and soldiers went onto Saipan, fort!
fled by the Japanese for over 30 years, u
headquarters for all enemy forces in the centr
Pacific, and the administrative hub of the entu
Marianas chain.
While the landing craft sped toward shor
Mitscher sent some carriers toward the Volcar
and Bonin islands to pound at the volcanic rocl
the Japanese called Iwo Jima and Chichi Jim
The attacks on enemy airfields there prevent*
the foe from sending land-based air support to tl
Marianas.
The main body of the carrier-battleship fore
under Admiral Spruance,, remained to support t!
landings. Spruance soon learned the Japanese na\
was coming down to fight.
Planes from American carriers and planes fro
Japanese flattops met over Guam. It was a da;
long engagement of screeching dives and dog figh
and when the Navy’s “turkey shoot” had end<
402 enemy planes out of a total of 545 that had bei
seen were out of action. American losses in this fii
battle of the Philippine Sea were 17 planes and fo
ships damaged.
American pilots went after the enemy's surfa
ships at extreme range next day, and straggl
back through the perils of the night with t
ports of two carriers, two destroyers and a tank
sunk, and 11 ships including three carriers and
battleship damaged. It was a decisive victory, i
though 73 U. S. planes with fuel tanks dry fell
sea. Land operations could now proceed withe
danger of enemy reinforcements.
Nevertheless Saipan was rough and bloody, wi
scenes of slaughter at places the Yanks appr
priately named Hell’s Pocket and Death Valli
But the invaders went ahead grimly and the isla
was announced secured on July 9.
Saipan’s fall led to the collapse of Premier Hidi
Tojo and nis caDinei. n. new Japanese eann.c .
formed under General Kuniaki Koisi.
On July 21, after almost a month-long sea a
air bombardment of the island, the Americans
vaded Guam. Marines and soldiers squeezed b<
sides of the Orote peninsula and met a hot rec«
tion on the beaches. But the Yanks, for the n
time in their long comeback drive, now were ngl
ing on an American island and for the first turn
native population was waiting to greet them.
While other Marines invaded and cleared neai
Tinian, the Yanks moved into Guam’s hills. Af
a slow, cave-by-cave advance they announced u
held complete control on August 10. Truk now s
fully exposed and at the mercy of land-bai
bombers from the north and the south.
Hardly had the smoke cleared before the beam
the Navy’s corps of construction men who co
fight as well as build, were on the Mananas, lay
long coral airfields and repairing Guam s harm
The clue to the value of those airfields had m
given the Japanese only the day after the Saif
landing, when they got their first view of anot
great American war achievement—the B-za sup
fortress. ... ,
Striking from a base in China on whicn
dropped the sweat of almost three-quarters
million peasants, the Superfortress fulfilled all
fears the enemy had felt when his homeland
was raided by Doolittle’s bombers in 194j
It was the mightest airplane in the world. ““L
fly 3,000-mile missions almost casually and
tremendous load of bombs along the way. 1
four 2,200 horsepower engines, its 55,000 nuino
parts, its 129 electric motors, 26 motor-general
15,000 feet of electric wiring and electrically
erated accessories, pressure cabins to enahie
fly high in the stratosphere, its central fire-c
system and computers that increased the accu
of its gunnery, it could be described only y
The first Superfortress raid against Japan
Yawata, on Kyushu, the enemy’s southernmost
land. On August 10 the B-29s went overNag as,
a Japanese shipping center, m the lo g
bombing operation in history. ,
Tokyo was stunned by the new super-bom
but its radio consoled itself: “We shou
that we have been passively attacked, but tna
have actively pulled the enemy toward us.
COMEBACK IN BURMA
JESIDES the woe caused by Saipan and
' Superfortresses, the Japanese now also a ]
oubles on their hands in Burma.
For two years since the dark day in 1