Fairwings over the Empire

The blockade of Japan was on in earnest. Their fat southern empire cut off and written off, the Japanese were trying feverishly to stockpile the home islands against invasion day with raw materials from North China, Manchuria and Korea. U.S. analysts concluded last week that Japan now had only a single unbroken line of communication with the mainland --the one from northeastern Korean ports, across the Sea of Japan, to small ports on the northwest coast of Honshu. The great funnel through which the lifeblood of imports was once transfused into Japan was already fouled with wrecked ships sunk by U.S. forces.

The Japs themselves were authority for the statement that U.S. submarines had begun to operate in the Sea of Japan. Whether or not that was true, the subs had helped clear the South China Sea of enemy shipping and presumably would be used farther north. Japanese harbors near the neck of the funnel had felt the weight of blows from U.S. aircraft carriers' planes. But the most continuously effective weapon for the blockade of Japan was the Navy's land-based aviation.

The Wreckers. Little known to the U.S. public, but greatly feared by Jap shipmasters, are the fleet air wings, which the Navy calls "Fairwings" for short. Fairwing 1 and Fairwing 18 have been based in the Ryukyu Islands since early April. Fairwing 1, under veteran seaplaner Rear Admiral John Dale Price, has sunk or damaged more than 200,000 tons of shipping in Korean waters. Fairwing 18, skippered by Rear Admiral Marshall Raymond Greer (onetime shipmate of Price in the old battleship North Dakota), has operated farther east, where the hunting was not so good, but sometimes it has flown over into Fairwing 1's territory to help out.

The fleet air wings' mission is primarily reconnaissance, to report enemy shipping to surface ships or bombers. But pilots dearly love to take their lumbering search planes down for bombing & strafing runs, in the hope of crippling ships and making them easy targets for the follow-up attackers. Better still, despite the danger to their own craft, the search pilots like to sink ships. The record shows how well they have done, flying Liberators, Privateers, Venturas, Mariners, Coronados and the faithful old Catalinas.

Typhoon Junction. The enemy may gain some respite from now until November, because the Ryukyus are the "typhoon junction" of the western Pacific. Weather will hinder U.S. forces and help some Jap ships to find shelter from U.S. bombs. But weather will not stop the blockade.

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