TIME: Almanac of the 20th Century

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<text> <title> (1940s) U.S. Offensive In The Pacific </title> <history> TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1940s Highlights </history> <link 07837> <link 00103><article> <source>Time Magazine</source> <hdr> U.S. Offensive in the Pacific </hdr> <body> [In the spring of 1942, the U.S. fought two huge air and naval battles in the Pacific: the Battle of the Coral Sea in May, which cost the U.S. dearly but stopped a large Japanese invasion force bound for Port Moresby, in New Guinea; and a month later, the Battle of Midway, which also stopped a Japanese fleet headed for Midway Island, and was an unqualified success. U.S. planes destroyed no less than four Japanese aircraft carriers. Both battles showed that in the air age, great fleets could inflict terrible damage on each other without ever directly exchanging a shot. On the Russian front, the Germans cranked up a devastating new offensive that crashed toward the city of Stalingrad and seemed about to win the war for Hitler. Then the offensive slowed, stopped, thwarted by the incredible bravery of Soviet soldiers fighting in the freezing rubble of the destroyed city.] (June 22, 1942) The worst news for Russia last week was not the peril to Sevastopol, nor the Nazi advance below Kharkov. for the U.S.S.R. and her Allies, the worst news as that on the two fronts where the Germans attacked in strength last week they had more men, more planes, more tanks, more everything than the Russians had. It was proof that, after all the agonies and losses of the Russian winter, the German armies were strong and fresh. And it was proof that in this new year of war Russia will need all the aid, on a second front and on her own fronts, that the Allies can give her. (September 21, 1942) The Germans inched on into the environs of Stalingrad. Day by day, for four weeks, they had sent mountains of men and machines to batter the Red Army back across duty steppes toward the Volga. Colossal expenditures bought each hillock, each ravine, each village, exacting of the Russians losses at least as heavy. The precise location of the battle line was not revealed by either Moscow reported this week that fighting was going on "in Stalingrad." French Russian plane, tank and artillery forces were moved up to the front in an attempt to offset the weight of German numbers. Rested flyers, gunners and tank crews brought with them hope to the stubbornly retreating Red Army. Stalingrad's fate depended upon the success of such fighters. There were no natural defenses. Sprawling along the Volga for 2.5-miles, Stalingrad's shoestring outline provides not even a compact area to defend. A breakthrough at any point could cut the defending forces in two. (September 28, 1942) Sorrow for Stalingrad tempered Russia's somber pride in Leningrad. The tsar-made city on the Baltic, entering its second year of siege, presented to Russia and the world an epic of agony and heroism which in its duration and sustained intensity exceeded even the siege of Sevastopol. One year ago, Field Marshal Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb threw three armies around the city. He failed to take it by storm. He then settled down to reduce it by attrition. Early in the stage, warehouses chocked with food enough for three years were destroyed by German bombers. The air was acrid with burning wheat. Gutters ran with melted chocolate. A terrible decision had to be made--who should eat? From limited food stocks, soldiers and defense workers were fed enough to keep them going. The rest of the city's 3,000,000 men, women & children were given only 125 grams of bread a day--about a slice and a half. From starvation, cold, disease and German bombs more than 1,000,000 died. The rest fought on. (December 7, 1942) One night a fortnight ago, the worn men of Major General Alexander Rodintsev's 13th Guards Division crouched in their holes in the north-west district of Stalingrad and listened to sudden thunderous cannonading. The din was their own artillery. For six weary weeks, under almost ceaseless shelling and air assaults, hacked at by infantry and tanks, the gaunt 13th had held the ditches, the doorways, the alleys and the gutted buildings. On their holding depended the success of marshal Timoshenko's strategy. (December 7, 1942) As the attack started from the south, Soviet troops north of Stalingrad also launched an assault, moving in a great arc toward Serafimovich. From Serafimovich prongs spread out like the curving tines of a peasant's pitchfork. In Stalingrad itself the 13th Division began to bend the stubborn German head backward. Inside the contracting area the battle became a melee. Distracted Axis troops faced in all directions at once. Panzer divisions dug in, using their tanks as pillboxes. Across the steppes galloped Cossacks in their black capes. Around gutted villages roared Russian tanks, swift motor-borne Siberian infantry. Axis troops in suddenly hopeless positions gave up. Across the steppes plodded long lines of Axis prisoners hobbling to Russian bases, some to have frozen limbs amputated, stumbling toward the Volga in a Drang nach Osten such as der Fuhrer never pictured. According to Moscow communiques, 66,000 were seized in ten days of fighting. (December 14, 1942) The Germans are losing the war in Russia, which means that they are losing World War II. On the frozen plains of Rzhev before Moscow, on the Don and in the Volga corridor at Stalingrad, in the snows and floods of the Caucasus, the Russians are on the offensive. But, as of this week, the Russian offensives alone are not defeating the Germans. Time is defeating the Germans. Old victories and old defeats are defeating the Germans: the Red Army's stands, retreats and counter-attacks; the Wehrmacht's losses at Smolensk, Rzhev and Moscow; the men and weapons spent, the weeks forever lost at Sevastopol; the spaces of the Ukraine, the Kuban plains and the upper Caucasus, conquered but nonetheless expensive to their conquerors; and, finally, the pit of Stalingrad. [While the Russians fought desperately in the Ukraine, the U.S. had finally taken the offensive in the Pacific. MacArthur's American and Australian forces defended Port Moresby against a Japanese assault from over the mountains on the huge island's north coast; having blunted the advance, they began to follow the retreating Japanese troops back over the mountains. U.S. Marines began a campaign against the Solomon Islands. First stop: Guadalcanal.] (August 16, 1942) The blow was struck up from Down Under at the exotic Melanesian land of the Solomon Islands, a fringe of volcanic peaks strung for 600 miles across the northern end of the Coral Sea, 900 miles from Australia's coast. It was no mere raid. It was an attack in force. The Navy was out to take the Solomons from the Jap--and with them the threat they held to the supply line from the U.S. to Australia, and to Australia itself. The U.S. communiques admitted that stiff resistance was encountered, admitted that at least one U.S. cruiser was sunk, two cruisers, two destroyers and one transport damaged. More important, it was announced after three days of fighting that landings had been made, a pretty good indication that the Marines who accompanied the fleet had obtained good footholds. But the Navy also said that "the enemy has counter-attacked with rapidity and vigor. Heavy fighting is still in progress." (August 31, 1942) The Navy had announced that the three islands where the Marines had landed--probably Florida, Tulagi and Guadalcanal--had been captured. After the opening round the only question was how quick and how powerful the Jap counter-attack would be. One naval attempt to relieve the Jap defenders had already been beaten off at the very outset of the U.S. offensive in a bloody seafight. The counter-attack came fast on the heels of the Navy's announcement that the first phase of the battler for the Solomons had been successfully completed. Down from the North, probably from Japan's great naval base on Truk Island, swept a great Japanese armada of battleships and carriers, cruisers and transports. By the next day a great naval battle had been joined, which both sea and air forces were taking part. Before Tuesday noon Army and Navy carrier-based planes had effectively bombed two Jap carriers, one battleship, several cruisers. One cruiser and one transport were left burning fiercely. Four hits had been scored on the larger Jap carrier by Army bombers. [The Japanese were determined to retake Guadalcanal at all costs. From their huge South Pacific headquarters at Rabaul on New Britain, they sent wave after wave of reinforcements down "the slot" of the Solomons, covered by air power. U.S. forces attempted to stop the re-supply and bomb the airfields at Rabaul, with only limited success; several important naval engagements were fought, with the U.S. winning the majority but no means all. Enough Japanese troops landed on Guadalcanal, mostly from speedy destroyers under cover of night, so that several bloody battles were fought.] (November 2, 1942) How could it be so important to battle for a three-by- eight-mile patch of meadow, jungle and coconut grove in an economically worthless island just across the way from nowhere? In the first place, the Marines' beachhead on Guadalcanal is important by the mere fact of its having been the first offensive U.S. battlefield against the Japs. It has become the vortex of a naval whirlpool which may easily engulf either adversary. But beyond that it is a geographic key. If the U.S. loses Guadalcanal, the Japanese can press on with relative ease, take the whole chain of islands down through the New Hebrides to New Caledonia, and then have only the narrow moat of the Coral Sea between them and Australia. But if the U.S. holds Guadalcanal, and can force its way up the chain as far as Rabaul, then the Allies will have a series of bases from which to build a major offensive against the Japs. [Finally, in December, the same speedy destroyers were used to remove what was left of the Japanese defenders. For them, Guadalcanal had proved a sinkhole that had cost dozens of ships, hundreds of planes and almost 15,000 troops. U.S. losses were about 1,600 troops. </body> </article> </text>