The Japs took a licking last week. They took it over and off northern Australia: at Kupang in Timor; at Salamaua and Lae in New Guinea, where U.S. and Aussie bombs scrambled scores of Jap planes on the ground; at Darwin, where four, possibly six, Jap bombers fell in one raid. More & more U.S. and Australian planes met fewer & fewer Japanese planes. Still more U.S. fighters, pilots and ground crews were arriving; more bombers were completing the long air-ferry leap across the Pacific.
They gave General Douglas MacArthur what no other United Nations commander had ever had in the...