Pantellaria And The Pacific
pp. 5-6 · Read in the full issue
SHICKELGRUBER’S anxious gang sters are trying to guess the actual “invasion date,” and assuming it may accord with the opening of the attack on Russia (June 22). If they want a significant date they have a wide choice. In this war, June has been a month of big events, thus:— 1940.
June 11.—Italy joins Germany; declares war on Britain and France.
June 17.—Petain announces the surrender of France to Germany and Italy.
June 17.—British aircraft-carrier “Glori ous,” 22,500 tons, two destroyers and a tanker, trapped by Germans and sunk. 1941.
June 22—Germany, without warning, launches attack on Russia. 1942.
June 20. —As climax to grave defeat of British in Libya, Tobruk and 25,000 men surrender to Axis.
Russian front has collapsed and Russian central and southern armies in retreat.
As it was on June 11, 1940, that the brigand Mussolini drove his stiletto into the back of helpless France, it was fitting that June 11, 1943, should have been the fall of Pantellaria, Italy’s first Mediterranean fortress.
We can hope that the invasion of the Nazis’ Europe will commence in June, 1943—it may serve to erase the bitter, humiliating memories of June. 1940, when the Franco-British Alliance broke so pitifully, and of June, 1942, when both British and Russians were being battered mercilessly by the Huns.
Before this month of June is gone,
we may see four things happening in Europe: The systematic destruction of industrial Germany by British and American bombers; the invasion of Italy by the Allies; and a great attack by Russian armies timed to accord with an Anglo-American invasion of Europe somewhere (apart from Italy) on the Mediterranean or Atlantic coast.
CAN we hope for the end of the war in Europe this year? We can. It is a slender hope—but it still is worth entertaining. It is allowed us by two outstanding developments of recent months—our unexpected victory in the Battle of the Atlantic, and the vast growth in the numbers and striking-power of the Allied air forces.
Three months ago, it seemed that the destruction of our shipping by U-boat packs would partly keep America’s mighty power out of Europe—in 1943, at any rate. But suddenly—how or why we have not been told —the U-boats have been checked, and held, and partly des troyed. American planes and troops are flowing freely into Europe. The bombing of Germany becomes a thing of vast and terrifying dimensions.
Italy is close to collapse; the Hun, at last, is fighting savagely on the de fensive. Fascism’s poodle - dog, Franco, is yelping his protests against our “cruel bombings.” London and Coventry and Plymouth are being avenged. We may be on the eve of tremendous events. Watch develop ments in Turkey and the Balkans.
But—let us not count too con fidently on an early end of the horror in Europe. There are several direc tions in which the Allies’ plans may go awry. Those Atlantic U-boat packs may operate again. We may not be able to bear a loss of nearly 30 great bombers per raid—which is the average cost of our ceaseless air attack on Germany. The Germans, justifiably fearing the vengeance of the nations they have tortured, may put up a better and longer defence than we now believe possible.
WHETHER the end in Europe comes soon or late, we people of the Pacific can see much to cheer our spirit in the European events of the past month. Can our cruel Asiatic enemy, who spread himself so greedily across the Pacific that he now is suffering a kind of territorial indiges tion—can these cunning and schem ing Japanese read the lesson of Pantellaria? • Pantellaria was a powerful island fortress—Mussolini’s answer to Malta.
It was created to defy our warships and our armies. But it actually surrendered before one member of our ground forces set foot upon its shores. It was bombed out of exist ence by the biggest and most effectively-directed air force ever used in a battle.
An island fortress cannot be re duced by land or sea forces, together or separately, except at very heavy cost. But overwhelming air-power, effectively co-ordinated with sea and/or land forces, can breach and reduce any fortification. That is the lesson of Pantellaria.
THE Japs have thrown around their new Pacific Islands empire a vast perimeter of defence. Ever since the Coral Sea, Solomon Islands and North-west Papua battles, in mid -1942, turned back their southwards thrusting expeditions, they have been feverishly building fortified bases upon scores and scores of islands, along that 5 000-miles front from the Gilberts to Sumatra. “If you want your Territories back,” says Mr. Tojo, of Tokio, “Come and take them!”
Guadalcanal and Tulagi, Buna and Gona and Attu, showed that the Japs could be thrown out of their forti fications and their foxholes —but at a cost. Were the Allies prepared to the cost of dislodging them from scores of such places? Mr. Tojo calculated that they were not.
Fortunately, speculation on that point is not necessary. The thing that Japan forgot, when she made her far-reaching plan to seize the South east Asian and Pacific countries, was the potential of air-power.
The flying - machine, carrying machine-guns and cannon and bombs, placing its missiles with deadly accuracy, ignores water-barriers, and jungle-barriers, mountains and forti fications; employing high explosive and the law of gravitation, it needs only a good base on land, and a few skilled men, to defeat the finest plans of military and naval technicians. It is doing it in Germany; it has done it in Pantellaria; it can do it in the islands of the Western and North west Pacific.
IT may not be necessary to use military forces to reduce Japan’s innumerable islands fortresses in the Western Pacific. It may not be neces sary to reduce them at all. When a man is attacked bv an octopus he does not exhaust himself in fighting the tentacles —he goes for the head.
Destroy the head, and the tentacles lose their strength and terror.
Japan knows her danger, now.
Tokio is getting jittery. Tokio says that every American bomber that approaches Japan will be destroyed by suicide squads of young Japs, who will hurl their fighting-planes upon the bombers. But America probably anticipated that one, and her answer may be seen, in due course.
Pantellaria, plus the ever-mounting air-power of the Allies, plus the cer tain knowledge that we can over whelmingly outbuild the aircraft factories of the Axis, brings to the beleagured peoples of the Pacific an assurance of victory, and freedom.
But let us not be impatient. We cannot expect to do much more than hold the Jap in the Pacific until Nazi power is destroyed in Europe.
Meanwhile, the Jap is most actively preparing to fight to the end. That he will fight to the end, we can have no doubt. We can only guess at the shape of the strategy which the United Nations will employ against him. We believe it will be based on air-power; but, beyond that, all is guess-work.
We shall not see the full picture in the Pacific until after Schickelgruber and Mussolini have been compulsorily
retired from the business of dictatorship, aggrandisement and the torturing of captive peoples. That may not occur in 1943—though the omens, at the moment, are favourable.