One Deal, Three Aces

At Okinawa, pilots of the 2nd Marine Air Wing took off to intercept a Japanese attacking force. Three of them--Major George C. Axtell Jr., of Baden, Pa., Major Jefferson Davis Dorrah, Hood River, Ore., and First Lieut. Jeremiah J. O'Keefe, Biloxi, Miss.--were flying into their first combat. When they landed again, all three were aces. Their joint score: 16 Japs shot down, two probables.

Into the Ridges

The 8,000-yard battleline across southern Okinawa had not changed position in 13 days. Ahead lay a Japanese army 50,000 strong, entrenched on rows of spiny ridges, each one a maze of log bunkers, concrete pillboxes, caves and tunnels. Patiently the Tenth Army's Lieut. General Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr. had waited until the Navy built up his supply dumps. Then he was ready.

Out of their foxholes, as a "thunderous preliminary bombardment by warships, planes and artillery died down, came Major General John R. Hodge's XXIV Corps. On the right the 27th Division reached for the Machinate air strip. In the center the 96th Division moved into the heart of the ridge defenses toward Shuri and its moated fortifications. On the left the 7th Division drove along the east coast toward the Yonabaru air strip.

Elsewhere things were going well for the Tenth. Marines of the III Amphibious Corps reached the northern end of Okinawa and cleared the last resistance pockets on Motobu peninsula. Units of the 77th Division landed on nearby le (pronounced ee-eh), seized a big airfield and secured the island.

But in southern Okinawa the fighting was grim. By week's end the troops had gained from 800 to 1,400 yards, but had established no driving momentum. One village was won and lost again. "Buck" Buckner stuck to his formula--root them out "with blowtorch and corkscrew."

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