The First Offensive

BATTLE OF THE PACIFIC (See Cover)

For the first time since Dec. 7 a priceless intangible asset finally came into U.S. hands: the attack on the Solomon Islands had snatched the offensive from the Japanese in the Pacific.

The blow was struck up from Down Under at the exotic Melanesian land of the Solomon Islands, a fringe of volcanic peaks strung for 600 miles across the northern end of the Coral Sea, 900 miles from Australia's coast (see map). It was no mere raid. It was an attack in force. The Navy was out to take the Solomons from the Jap--and with them the threat they held to the supply line from the U.S. to Australia, and to Australia itself.

In seizing the offensive the Navy put the Jap at an immediate disadvantage, a disadvantage that will last as long as the offensive is held: now the Jap had to guess where the next blow would fall--to move fast and think fast in order to get there in time.

Last week this new advantage was exploited. A Flying Fortress made an observation flight over Wake, cruising back & forth over the island taking pictures. At about the same time as the Solomon Islands attack, U.S. surface ships moved in and bombarded Jap vessels and shore installations at Kiska. When the attack came in the South Pacific the Jap obviously could not be sure what to expect.

But only the actual attack in force on the Solomons made these moves effective. That attack was directed by Vice Admiral Robert Lee Ghormley, Commander in the South Pacific with headquarters in New Zealand. Fresh from a two-year tour as naval observer in London, Admiral Ghormley is vaguely known by the public as a figure in top-drawer naval diplomacy, but the Navy regards him as one of the best sea planners who ever came out of Annapolis.

First Blow. Fifty-eight-year-old Admiral Ghormley laid out the whole show. He did it with the approval and the help of his superior, Admiral Chester William Nimitz of Pearl Harbor, command hero of Midway, who had the disposal of the whole Pacific Fleet and was able to dispatch the force that mixed up the Jap in Kiska.

Like every other naval job in his 39-year naval career, Planner Ghormley's program for battle was a model of carefully thought planning, astute execution, use of every tool he had within reach. This time Douglas MacArthur in Australia knew what was afoot, as he did not in the Battle of the Coral Sea; he was enlisted by his opposite number in New Zealand to join in the first fully planned big-scale battle cooperation of U.S. Army and Navy in World War II.

As the task force approached the Solomons, Douglas MacArthur's airmen began smashing at Jap air bases. The purpose was obvious: to hamstring the Jap in the employment of the best weapon he had against sea attack. Army bombers raided the old familiar targets at Lae and Salamaua on the northeast coast of New Guinea by day and by night. On Friday, Aug. 7 (Thursday in the U.S.), when Ghormley's force had its first contact with the Japs, the Army was raiding Rabaul in New Britain, probably the Jap's strongest position east of Amboina. And up at the top of the Solomons they came in by night on Buka (see map), opening their bomb gates on airdromes and parked Jap planes. Meanwhile Ghormley moved in.

Bull's-Eye. Ghormley's first objective was soon announced. It was Tulagi, one of the best harbors in the Solomons, which the Jap had held since early June for his Indies defensive screen and for a jump-off place if he should decide to head south across the Australian supply line again.

The course to Tulagi would have been perilous enough without the Jap to meet, for the waters around the Solomons are dark and mysterious to mariners. The best charts of the area are dangerously tentative in their locations of coral reefs and small islands, dangerously lacking in soundings off shores still unexplored.

Admiral Ghormley must have known generally what resistance he would meet. Tulagi was the scene of the Navy's first attack in the Battle of the Coral Sea, a blistering aerial surprise that caught a Jap force flatfooted, littered its tiny (one square mile) harbor with the hulks of nine or ten ships, including five cruisers. Since then, it had been regularly scouted.

Around Tulagi, the bull's-eye, are other rings of the Navy's target. Most important of them passes through the island of Guadalcanal, said to be the only spot on the Solomons where a big system of air-dromes could be established. For the rest, the Solomons are precipitously mountainous (highest peak 10,000 feet), bordered with miasmic mangrove swamps, inhabited by ebony-black natives with an incurable habit of roasting and eating white visitors.

Ding Dong. The fighting that accompanied the attack was of that bitter kind that can be expected in landing on a hostile shore against a determined enemy. The Japs announced that their planes went out and engaged the attacking vessels in a raging storm. As usual they made exaggerated claims of losses inflicted on the U.S.--asserted that they had sunk a battleship and 21 other warships and transports.

The U.S. communiques admitted that stiff resistance was encountered, admitted that at least one U.S. cruiser was sunk, two cruisers, two destroyers and one transport damaged. But they announced that initial surprise had been achieved, that many enemy planes had been downed and surface vessels put out of action.

More important, it was announced after three days of fighting that landings had been made, a pretty good indication that the Marines who accompanied the fleet had obtained good footholds. But the Navy also said that "the enemy has counterattacked with rapidity and vigor. Heavy fighting is still in progress." In short, it was a ding-dong battle, with U.S. planes, presumably carrier-based, fighting land-based Jap planes, and troops of both sides fighting hand to hand.

Man from Moscow. When Ghormley became a maker of battles, even his old classmates found that they really knew little of their friend. They could describe his thin grey hair, his stern mouth, his droop-lidded eyes. They could discourse on his geniality when he relaxed over a drink, on the calm, unexcited way of his command of a battleship, of his respect for the opinions of his staff officers before his own decisions were made. But few of them had ever got to the inside of the man. When they tried, by thinking back over his friendship, they decided that inside was all Navy. In Ghormley's reserved, detached life there had been little room for anything else.

At Annapolis he had been fullback on the football team, and the midshipmen had given him the nickname he still carries: "Old Hookem." (On the gridiron, where he was cool and harddriving, the midshipmen used to shout: "Hook 'em, Ghormley! Hook 'em!") In the classroom he had an air of amused disinterest, but he wore on his blouse the gold star of the distinguished cadet, was graduated twelfth in his class.

His qualities of leadership had been developing since he was a youngster, the first of six children of the Rev. David Owen Ghormley, Presbyterian minister of Portland, Ore. When Bob Ghormley was ten, the family moved to Moscow, Idaho, and it was from there he entered the Academy.

Before he did so he put in three years at the University of Idaho in his home town, was quarterback of the football team, won a $2 prize in an oratory contest, was a major in the cadet corps.

When war came in 1917, Ghormley was first lieutenant of the battleship Nevada. He was aide and flag lieutenant in Battleship Force One when Washington called him ashore, gave him a job in the Naval Overseas Transportation Service. In a complicated job without glory, Old Hookem was tagged for tough administrative and diplomatic jobs.

He worked in the Bureau of Navigation (personnel), was aide to two Assistant Secretaries of the Navy (Theodore Roosevelt Jr. and T. Douglas Robinson), was assistant chief of staff to a Commander of the Battle Force and to a CINCUS (Admiral F. H. Schofield).

He saw enough Washington duty, as Secretary of the General Board and in the Bureau of Naval Operations, to decide to settle there with his wife and three children (a daughter and two sons, the youngest now prepping for Annapolis). When his time came for flag rank he was made skipper of the old Nevada. From then on he wore the broad stripe of Admiral's rank as he settled down in the Navy's top drawer--Naval War College, operations officer to the CINCUS (Admiral A. J. Hepburn), Director of War Plans, observer in London (with the temporary rank of vice admiral).

Far-Reaching Results. If the Battle of the Solomons is a U.S. victory it will be on Admiral Ghormley's blouse that the medal is pinned--and deservedly. Starting from a base 3,600 miles from home, he had to organize the most difficult kind of amphibious operation, a landing on a hostile shore, in dangerous waters, against an enemy with land-based aircraft.

If it proved costly, that was only to be expected. Said a Navy communique: "It should be understood that the operation now under way is one of the most complicated and difficult in warfare. Considerable losses, such as are inherent in any offensive operation, must be expected as the price to be paid for . . . the attainment of far-reaching results."

The far-reaching results were still far off. For if the Japanese are driven from the Tulagi area, they will still hold Bougainville in the northern Solomons, from which they must be driven in turn. But the capture of Tulagi will mean that the Japanese strongholds in New Britain and New Guinea will have their flanks threatened.

Meanwhile, the most immediate result is that the Japs have, at least for a time, been put on the defensive.

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