Hero into Soldier

A hint of waxing Jap air power appeared in the South Pacific last week. For months only handfuls of Japanese raiders had stung Allied bases in New Guinea and the Solomons. Suddenly they swarmed out in force. Twenty-six bombers and eleven fighters struck at Wau, the airfield closest to Jap-held Salamaua. Forty raiders attacked Oro Bay south of Buna. Jap air strength, waning at the end of 1942, seemed to be surging back.

Two Jap convoys moved south through the Bismarck Sea. Allied planes, scouting and bombing as far as the Dutch East Indies and Portuguese Timor, saw disquieting signs" of Jap activity. Both General Douglas MacArthur and Prime Minister Curtin of Australia understood that the smashing U.S. victory in the Battle of the Bismarck Sea (TIME, March 15) had not guaranteed the security of Australia and the Allied positions in New Guinea.

Far from denoting permanent air superiority for the Allies in the Southwest Pacific, the Bismarck victory had proved only that the airmen under Douglas MacArthur knew how to use what tools they had at hand. Real security could come only when planes and fuel were available in far greater quantities, and when the Japs had been completely driven out of the Solomons, New Guinea, New Britain and their important bases on Timor.

Full Circle. Pondering these matters, Douglas MacArthur this week (March 17) completes his first year in Australia. Just twelve months ago, clothed in the tragic glory of Bataan, he had come down from the skies to take command of United Nations forces in the Southwest Pacific. Australia would never forget the sight of him, striding confidently in his washed-khaki jacket, gold-braided cap and bamboo swagger stick, lifting Aussie hopes. His coming changed the country. His year changed him.

That year was enough to change any man, and to destroy a lesser one. Uncertain and divided authority in Australia, the slow flow of men and weapons to his command, his acute sense of hostility in Washington made his first months a period of agonized frustration. His defense of Bataan had enshrined MacArthur as a hero to the U.S. people, but not to the U.S. High Command.

Even his men, and many of his officers in Australia, long lacked any real sense of him as their leader; in that difficult period, Douglas MacArthur was a warm and compelling personality only to a few officers on his personal staff. His airmen felt that he understood neither them nor their problems and potentialities (like many airmen, they perhaps made no great effort to understand General MacArthur).

At some point not precisely discernible, MacArthur's star began to rise again. His airmen were able to do a bang-up job, flying men and supplies over the Owen Stanley range to his troops on New Guinea. The campaign for Papua succeeded. Lieut. General George C. Kenney, MacArthur's air-force commander, acquired a deep respect for him. His men just behind the New Guinea lines saw him in person (see cut). Upon combined ground and air power, he formulated a doctrine of Pacific offense: "A new form of campaign was tested . . . the offensive and defensive power of aircraft in the air ... in an Effective combination with ground forces presents tactical and strategic elements of broadened conception . . . that will permit massive strokes . . . rather than a costly island-to-island advance."

By the end of his year, his conduct of the New Guinea campaign and his use of air power had earned new prestige for him in Washington. His relations with the General Staff were still formal, but they were also effective. At the start of his second year, General MacArthur was no flaming hero. He was a soldier doing a job.

Mission to Washington. Last week Lieut. General Kenney and MacArthur's devoted Chief of Staff, Lieut. General Richard K. Sutherland, and several other officers from the MacArthur area, were in Washington for conferences with the General Staff. Perhaps the time had come for across-the-table talks on strategy in the South Pacific, where the Japs were stirring in their island perimeter.

The nature of these talks was of course a secret. Douglas MacArthur's first promise when he reached Australia was that he would return to the Philippines. His recently enunciated theories of Pacific strategy left no doubt about the route he would like to take: by broad strokes through the intervening Jap bases (northern New Guinea, Rabaul in New Britain, perhaps Timor on his northwestern flank). Douglas MacArthur will not be idle in his second year.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.