Burma's Allied Sky

U.S. and British flyers won shoestring control of the air over Burma last week. It was not decisive, for the Japanese could, if necessary, double their air power in Burma overnight--something that General Sir Archibald Wavell and Brigadier General Claire L. Chennault each wished that he could do.

But this control was at least a first sign of well-planned coordination between the air forces based in China and those in India. Both concentrated against Jap airfields and communications.

General Chennault's Air Task Force, based in China's Yuennan Province, worked hard all week. Having won control of the air over Yuennanyi, most advanced Jap base inside southwest China, the flyers hit Lashio four times to try to jam the railhead through which supplies flow to the Japs' Salween front. For the first time they jumped on Japanese convoys on the Burma Road in broad daylight, hitting oil dumps in the junction town of Mingmao twice and catching trucks dispersed under trees. They blew up a railroad bridge south of Mandalay.

The limited nature of General Wavell's attack in Burma was now clear. He wanted Akyab. He wanted it as an air base for attacks on Rangoon and Mandalay, and so that the Japs could not have it for attacks on Chittagong and Calcutta. His advance last week crept forward without major Japanese opposition but in the face of a bitterly resisting terrain to within 25 miles of the objective. To support him Allied flyers pasted Japanese bases at Heho and Shwebo, near Mandalay. They attacked Magwe, 128 miles east of Akyab, three times in two days. And they attacked shipping in Rangoon and Akyab.

Skillful flyers were being developed over Burma. As in the Solomons and at sea, they were exacting a far heavier toll from the Japanese than the Japs from them.

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