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Show TIGERS: U. S. Burma Pilots WEEKLY NEWS ANALYSIS By Edward C. Wayne ! U. S. War Output Gains Momentum; j Churchill Government Under Fire as Prime Minister Admits 'Heavy and Far-Reaching Defeat' in Singapore (EDITOR'S NOTE When opinions re expressed Id these columns, they are those of the news analyst and not necessar'ly of this newspaper.) 1 (Released by Western Newspaper Union. ) 1 . ip, jyi) mini -wx?s,KwM( i - . - ) I ! ' li'll '1' . J H ' 'S 1 VsA- f ? '' ' J Gen. Claire Chennault, leader of the American "Tiger" squadron on the Burma front, as his filers downed 48 Jap planes in two days. Chennault became Chiang Kai-shek's Kai-shek's air force advisor early in 1941. Playing the game of war as college lads play football, General (Chinese Army) Clair Chenault, former Texas school teacher, and his American "Tiger" squadron flying for Chiang Kai-shek reported they had downed 185 Japanese planes during two months on the Burma front. They were the boys assigned to keep the Burma road open and free from attacks by Jap bombers. The Japs sent over a formation of 60. The Tigers got 48 of them in two days. Only three of their men were lost in two planes. All his pilots were trained in U. S. flying schools, and all held flying commissions with the U. S. army, being released before we went into the war to fight for China. They were organized last summer. sum-mer. On Christmas they celebrated with a "bag" of 48 planes. The first Jap flight of 60 planes went into flight with the Tigers pursuing pur-suing them far back into Thailand, and downing nearly half of them. The Five months ahead of schedule, the twin destroyers, TJ.S.S. Butler (right) and the TJ.S.S. Gherardi, slide down the ways into the Delaware river at Philadelphia. The launching preceded by four days the completion comple-tion of the 35,000-ton battleship Alabama at Portsmouth, Va. Secretary of the Navy Knox hailed the launching of the Alabama nine months ahead of schedule as the end of the "defense era" and the beginning of the "war era." MATERIAL: Rushed to Fronts America was launching a warship war-ship every day and rushing men and material of warfare to all fronts as the determined national effort to win the war with superior military power pow-er gained momentum even as the black news from the Southwest Pacific Pa-cific and other areas continued to make 'American spirits even grimmer. grim-mer. Stories from the fronts of one major ma-jor setback of another vied for headline head-line space with great stories of heroism hero-ism from those same fronts of the men who were carrying the Stars and Stripes into action. One week-end's schedule, on the home front, saw a 6,000-ton cruiser launched on Saturday, a destroyer on Sunday, and a 35,000-ton battleship battle-ship on Monday. Naval authorities pointed out that a launching a day would soon be followed by the placing of a warship war-ship a day in commission. At the same time, from half a dozen ports Of embarkation, train-loads train-loads of tanks, guns and munitions of war were going into black-hulled merchant ships, to be convoyed to the scenes of action. Coincidentally, President Roosevelt, Roose-velt, in his White House office was conferring long hours with 11 military mili-tary and naval experts of the world, putting teeth into the war effort. Back of it all, from coast to coast, men in the newest registration were being called to the colors, to raise our army of 1,700,000 men to 3.6Q0,-000 3.6Q0,-000 or even more. From the Ford plant in Detroit had come the first airplane engines produced after nearly a year of "tooling up" for this eventuality. Benson Ford and other engineers came to an eastern plane factory for the first air tests. The test pilots soared aloft. In a few hours they were back. "Phenomenal" "Phe-nomenal" was the word they used about the performance. The Ford engineers assured the factory heads that they would not want for engines for their ships from now on. BLACK: News of War Much of the news of the war was gloomy. The f all of Singapore gave Churchill his biggest headache since the fall of France. The prime'min-ister prime'min-ister admitted this "heavy" and far-reaching far-reaching defeat" in a broadcast to the world. Reverses in Libya and the escape of the Scharnhorst, Gneisenau and Prince Eugen from Brest heightened the gloom. Why, screamed the British press. Why, echoed the "man in the street" throughout England. Why, re-echoed the commentators in the United States. It was a triple-barreled question concerning the German warships. Why was not the British fleet capable capa-ble of bottling up these ships? Why had 66 bombing attacks failed to damage them? Why had the British come out of the channel sea and air battle with 42 planes down against 18 for the Germans, and with their quarries sailing safely off to the Heligoland Bight? RUSSIANS : Fight Out of Shoes So fast and furiously were the Russians fighting, according to one of their own communiques, that their soldiers' "felt shoes were wearing out." The Russians, however, admitted that the Nazi resistance was stiffening stiffen-ing all along the line, and that many counter-attacks were being launched. On the northern front, they said, German and Finnish ski troops took part in one of these attacks. DEATH: Penalty Extended It had now become the death penalty pen-alty for any Frenchman to allow Americans to hide or to escape from the German occupationists in northern north-ern France. The capital penalty also had been extended to any French prisoners ( escaping from internment camps, ! or for French prisoners who did : not have proper release papers. ' The safety of Americans in occupied occu-pied France now is in grave doubt. w " 1 "- ,.. JOHORE: And Singapore The story of the Johore causeway, that granite pathway which connects con-nects Singapore with the mainland, was being pieced together from British Brit-ish admissions and Japanese claims, and was believed a major factor in the black military page in Britain's book that was the Malaya campaign. The entire British defending army, believed clipped down to some 30,-000-odd fighting men during the retreat re-treat down Malaya, was moved oyer the causeway to carry on the siege of Singapore.- Stories at the time related how the intrepid engineers remained until un-til the last to blow up and destroy the causeway. The Japs declared the British only "breached it" making a brief break in the causeway which the little men from Nippon repaired by night, and then swarmed across to drive the British back. A second time, nearly a week later, lat-er, British artillery tore the causeway cause-way in two again. And once more the Japs made the repairs and sent trucks and men on to the attack on the island. The Japanese admitted "obstinate resistance," and "counter-attacks," but even the most sanguine British commentators considered the odds utterly prohibitive. BROWN: And Censors Cecil Brown, radio broadcaster and war commentator from Singapore, Singa-pore, had flown 2,900 miles from the besieged stronghold to Sydney, Australia to tell the world the reason rea-son for the blackly gloomy battle of Malaya. Significant of the bitterness of Australia toward the British conduct of the Far Eastern preparations was the fact that Brown, barred from broadcasting at all over the Singapore Singa-pore radio because he wouldn't paint a rosy picture of things, was freely permitted to talk when he got on Australian territory. His story was not pretty. It started start-ed way back in Penang, when the British, he said, evacuated only the white, leaving the natives to fend for themselves. When this information informa-tion filtered through to the mainland, main-land, the British had plenty of troubles trou-bles with the natives there, said Brown. Then he took up the scorched earth policy, declaring that far from destroying everything, the retreating retreat-ing British had left one important air field so little damaged that the Japs were using it themselves two days after the British left it. Singapore was being bravely defended de-fended while he had been speaking. He paid high tribute to the valor and fighting qualities of the British defenders. But Singapore, he hinted, was Britain's Pearl Harbor a story of complacency, of unreadiness, of not heeding warnings. The Bombay (India) Chronicle added that Churchill's policy has been marked by indefensible com-placeny, com-placeny, unpreparedness and incompetence. in-competence. MISCELLANY: Washington: Senator Vandenberg headed a group which demanded a probe of the Normandie disaster, calling it "second only to Pearl Harbor." Har-bor." New Orleans: The famous Mardi Gras had been called off, and instead in-stead of the annual million-dollar spectacle, the populace marched to bond booths and loaned their money to Uncle Sam. Buy Defense Bonds Cairo: The British finally had stopped their back-pedaling on the Libyan front, and mobile columns began again harassing Rommel's troops, while the R.A.F. bombed sup1 ply bases of the enemy. Buy Defense Bonds Washington: Heavy compensation for civilian workers in plants who lost their jobs while the factories were being retooled for war production produc-tion was being assailed in congress con-gress as a $300,000,000 bill went under un-der consideration. --V - Japs came back the next day with 70 planes, and again a squadron of 18 Tiger ships shot them to pieces, accounting for a two-day total of 48. HEROES: Of U. S. Jungles The medal of the D.S.C. finally was awarded to one of the selectees in the first draft when General Mac-Arthur Mac-Arthur pinned it on the chest of Sergeant Ser-geant Leroy C. Anderson of the tank corps, a lad from Milwaukee. All Anderson did was to "eagerly request" permission to take his unit of small tanks and smash a nasty group of Japanese machine gun nests. v Permission was granted. Anderson Ander-son didn't ask his mates to go where he would not, but made his own reconnaissance tour first. Then he moved with the other tanks to the attack. The enemy' guns and crews were wiped out. Anderson's own tank, in the forefront of the battle, was put out of action. He and his crew dismounted, dis-mounted, continued the fight with rifles and grenades. He was slightly slight-ly wounded. Frank Hewlett, a correspondent who stayed with MacArthur's fighting fight-ing heroes, wrote: "Our boys have hurled back Japanese Jap-anese assaults that a few weeks back would have driven them into retreat. "Our men are now seasoned warriors. war-riors. They have been 'blooded' and have stood the test." To the question of "where is the main Japanese naval strength" the answer had come when Australian fliers reported they had found them off the coast of New Britain island, 300 miles north of Australia. At the same time American flying fortress planes had begun bombing attacks on Jap ships in the Macassar Macas-sar area, reported setting one large ship afire and having damaged another. an-other. ECONOMIC: Economy Demanded Led by Senators Byrd and Tyd-ings, Tyd-ings, a wave of criticism of non-defense non-defense spending had followed earlier ear-lier attacks on OCD "boondoggling" and was meeting with considerable interest from people in general who were seeing one commodity after another taken from their reach by lack of supply. Jesse Jones and Donald Nelson told the people that the rubber situation situ-ation was indeed severe. Senator Brewster of Maine, in a statement, had promised the public that the Truman committee was conducting a rubber investigation which would "tear the lid off the situation." Nelson's WPB ruled that all production pro-duction of mechanical ice-boxes must stop April 30, the refrigerators refrigera-tors following automobiles out of the public picture. LaGuardia, having resigned from the OCD, proceeded to urge that most of the activities of Mrs. Roosevelt's Roose-velt's end of the OCD be transferred trans-ferred to other agencies. The WPB announced it was going into the "auto graveyards" of the country, to which hopeful owners of second-hand cars were looking for parts, in order to get scrap metaL The petroleum situation, with many tankers sunk by U-boats on the eastern seaboard, was getting serious, and oil was starting to move by rail, 1,000 tank cars rolling roll-ing over the rails daily. As to the rubber situation, Nelson and Jones said: "The rubber we have today, plus the rubber that is on its way here, plus the rubber we shall eventually make in our new synthetic rubber factories, is all the new rubber we can count on. "There is about enough to complete com-plete our armament program. But there is not going to be any to spare. We dare not waste any." Meanwhile it was announced in London that Britain's clothing ration ra-tion probably will be reduced soon by an additional 25 per cent. |
