Edges of a Battle?

The battle of Australia had patently entered a new phase. Australia itself now waved no flags, hung up no bunting for the victory in the Battle of the Coral Sea.

Australia now understood that it was only the first phase of the Jap's attempt to extend to the south and that he would try again, stronger than before.

Into Sydney and other ports came grim human mementos of the fight already fought. The survivors came back unannounced ; Sydney did not know they were there until three battle-worn U.S. sailor-men turned up at a bar, silently downed their drinks and smashed the glasses. "You better go away," one of them told the inquisitive barkeep. "We're drinking to our shipmates that didn't come back."

Then Sydney saw those who did come back. Some came ashore leaning on the arms of other sailormen and waving bandaged hands at the Aussies. Others lay still on their stretchers, piled with blankets. Many were badly burned.

In their newspapers Aussies read of the brighter side. A correspondent who got a look at the movies taken of the battle by the Army Air Forces reported that of 22 Jap ships knocked out by U.S. and Australian bombers, 18 were sunk, including two carriers, two cruisers, nine destroyers.

Watching Tojo. But from the north more menacing news sifted down into Sydney's bars and restaurants. Back of his screen of islands the Jap was massing again, at Rabaul in New Britain, at Lae and Salamaua on the east coast of New Guinea, and at more remote points in the Indies. Douglas MacArthur's airmen, after a full share with the Navy in the Battle of the Coral Sea, went back to work on the Jap's hideouts. They fired buildings and planes at Lae, hit heavily at Rabaul, ranged 700 miles north to the old Dutch naval, base at Amboina, where they fired docks and potted three small freighters. The Jap sent up swarms of Zeros to block them, found again that modern bombers with tail turrets are by no means basement bargains for fighter pilots.

Against the menace of the Allied air base at Port Moresby the enemy threw his greatest aerial attack yet, a raid by 26 bombers escorted by nine Zeros. The base went on operating. It had to. Bombers operating from there and the north Australian bases are doing something besides bombing the enemy. They are also watching him. By the time the Jap moves south again, their reconnaissance reports may turn out to be more important than all the damage they have done.

Watching Uncle Sam. The Jap worked hard for the same kind of information. From surface vessels and his "stationary carriers" in the islands, his patrol planes ranged far & wide. This week the Jap broadcast some of his findings from Tokyo. Tokyo's story was that a heavy U.S. task force, centered on the carriers Hornet and Enterprise, was 580 miles east of the Solomon Islands, only 30 hours' steaming from the Coral Sea. If the Jap could be believed, the South Pacific lapped at the edges of a naval and air battle that could make the Coral Sea show look like a mere setting-up exercise.

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