Over the Bay

The Japanese invaded India. When their warships and planes struck in the Bay of Bengal, they struck as directly at the troubled mainland as if their troops had landed in Calcutta.

If the Japs win the Bay of Bengal, they will have all but won the Battle of India. They did not win the Bay last week. But they inflicted terrible naval losses on the British. Near the key island of Ceylon, at the southwestern entrance to the Bay of Bengal, R.A.F. fighters knocked down at least 75 Jap planes. Yet, after a week of combat, the British were weaker, the Japanese were relatively stronger than they had been when the battle started.

Off Malaya, off Java and now off India, the naval story was the same: the U.S. and British were caught by superior Japanese forces. The Allies in these areas had lost the equivalent of a formidable fleet: two capital ships (Prince of Wales, Repulse), four heavy cruisers, three or more light cruisers, twelve to 15 destroyers. At any one place and time, with effective air support, they could have beaten the Japs. As it was, piecemeal, the Allies lost both the ships and the battles.

The Admiralty Regrets. Jap battleships, cruisers, aircraft carriers, destroyers, probably submarines moved toward India from the recently occupied Andaman Islands, some 900 miles across the Bay of Bengal. The U.S. Air Force's Major General Lewis Hyde Brereton had led a flight of Flying Fortresses to the Andamans and bombed Jap troopships there. From their Indian bases, his Fortresses presumably roved the embattled Bay last week. They were not enough; the Bay was too big, and the Japs too many.

The beginning was bad. Off eastern India, between Calcutta and Madras, Jap warships and planes closed on a British merchant fleet. Some 500 survivors said nothing about air defense from nearby India, nothing of defense by any accompanying British warships. Tokyo later claimed that in this and other attacks, the Japanese sank 2 merchantmen, damaged 23 more. New Delhi admitted some merchant losses.

Worse was to come. Fighter-bombers from Jap aircraft carriers spotted two heavy cruisers, the Dorsetshire and the Cornwall. Both ships had proud records in the Royal Navy; the Dorsetshire's torpedoes sank the Bismarck in 1941 (after she had been crippled by aerial attack). Under Jap bombs the cruisers went down. If they had air protection, neither British nor Japanese communiques mentioned it.

Worst was last, for finally the many Japs struck at sea-air power. Carrier-based bombers attacked Ceylon's naval and air base at Trincomalee. R.A.F. fighters in the area concentrated on the defense of the base. That was too bad. Some 70 miles from Trincomalee, only ten miles offshore, was Britain's ancient, smallest aircraft carrier, the 15-plane Hermes. Perhaps her planes never got off the flight deck, perhaps they, too, were engaged over Trincomalee. Or perhaps they were simply overwhelmed. Down went the bombed Hermes.

British and U.S. planes roamed the Bay. Some of them, probably R.A.F. bombers from Ceylon, tracked down a Jap carrier and attacked. They missed; they also "suffered some losses." The Royal Navy still had "substantial forces" in the Bay of Bengal; enemy accounts mentioned at least several more cruisers, another aircraft carrier, two battleships (including the old, U.S.-repaired Malaya). The British figured that the Japs had three of their newest 50,000-ton battleships, five aircraft carriers, a strong complement of cruisers and destroyers. Gloomiest index of the results of the first battles for the Bay was a British call for help from the U.S. Navy.

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