August, 1942 Almost forty years ago this month a very few American pilots turned a war around in the distant Pacific. They should be remembered. They are known, in a new book, as the fliers of "The Cactus Air Force." IF EVER fighter pilots won a combined land-sea and air campaign, these few squadrons squad-rons did, between August of THE FIRST Marine fighter squadron into Guadalcanal was 223; some pilots from 212 and 121 were also included. The first bombing squadron was 232. The first USAAF squadron there was the 67th Pursuit. Then came pilots from the stricken carrier "Enterprise." The last two units to reach the island in August were Marine VMF-224 and bombing bomb-ing squadron 23 1. All reinforcements rein-forcements in September were Marine units: THOMAS MILLER Jr. (Harper and Row and Bantam paper) has detailed this epic air struggle which stopped the Japanese advance in the Pacific, Paci-fic, in what is the classic account of the desperate air struggle for Guadalcanal. It began this month, thirty-nine thirty-nine years ago. Those who were there, or who followed it at the time, can never forget. All Americans are in their debt. 1942 and the end of that year. They flew from Henderson Field, on Guadalcanal. Their ability to bomb and sink Japanese ships, and win air battles in Guadalcanal's vicinity, was the difference in ground, sea and air fighting. THE JAPANESE Navy won most of the early naval battles. Had they been able to supply their forces on Guadalcanal from the sea, as would have been normal with naval superiority, super-iority, they could have won the immortal struggle for that island. is-land. Cactus Air Force pilots didn't let them. Thus, U.S. land forces, at first Marines as were the first pilots won the land battle. The Navy finally final-ly recovered and came back to win the sea war. By February of 1943, the Japanese abandoned aban-doned the island.