Another Coral Sea?

The Navy had expected a carrier task force battle ever since the Solomons invasion began. Not until last week, almost seven weeks after the Wasp had been sunk by submarines, did it come. A great Jap naval force in two sections, including at least three aircraft carriers, bore down from the northeast. Vice Admiral William Frederick ("Bull") Halsey Jr., the South Pacific's new commander, had his carrier force ready to battle Jap carriers for the third time in six months. Once again the battle was chiefly between planes and ships; no major surface engagement was reported by the Navy.*

Admiral Halsey's flyers damaged two Jap aircraft carriers of the 17,000-ton Zuikaku class--one of them with four to six heavy bomb hits. They hit a battleship of the 29,330-ton Kongo class with two heavy bombs, another battleship with one; scored torpedo and bomb hits on three heavy cruisers. The Jap plane loss was heavier than in the Coral Sea battle, about half as heavy as Midway: "over 100" destroyed, 50 more probably shot down.

Ships in the Japanese anchorage in the Buin-Faisi area and at Rabaul were slapped night after night by heavy and medium bombers from General MacArthur's command. Army pilots saw one cruiser blow up. Total hits claimed by MacArthur: 36, including one carrier and five cruisers.

The Cost. Such battles do not come cheaply. The destroyer Porter was lost, other ships damaged. But the real blow came when the Navy announced that another precious, unidentified U.S. aircraft carrier had followed the Lexington, Yorktown and Wasp to a deep grave in the Pacific. Whether she was the Enterprise, the Saratoga, the Ranger or the Hornet was not announced. When the Japs withdrew northward, either in outright retreat or to regroup for another action, Bull Halsey sent his ships to shell the enemy positions on Guadalcanal.

Last week's running battle was still not the all-out engagement between great surface and air forces which, sooner or later, may determine the balance of naval power in the Pacific. Whether the Japs' losses compensate for the U.S. carrier losses in Solomon waters, the Navy will know when that definitive battle has been fought.

On Guadalcanal. "The Japs attacked us and we suffered 85 casualties," said one marine. "Two thousand dead Jap bodies presented a disposal problem." In a little attack of their own the Marines slipped across their western boundary at the Matanikau River, cheerfully seized two 75-mm. guns that had been shelling them. This week, supported by fighters, by dive-bombers which knocked out Jap guns, and even by Flying Fortresses, the Marines pushed back that boundary a couple of miles.

* Naval officers this week described the hot surface engagement off Guadalcanal Oct. 11-12, claiming one Jap cruiser sunk by gunfire, three others badly hit.

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