How great a toll Allied planes and submarines had exacted of Japanese merchant shipping could only be estimated from the combat-colored reports of returning pilots and submarine skippers. Last week Secretary of the Navy Knox, in a St. Patrick's Day speech in Manhattan, guessed that 1,857,000 gross tons had been sunk, out of a prewar tonnage of 6,369,000. Knox hastily added that half the probable loss had been replaced by new construction, salvage and seizure of foreign vessels in Asiatic ports. Net Jap loss: about 14% of her merchant marine.
Said an official spokesman at General MacArthur's Australian headquarters: "It would be...
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