Washington –
King Peter of Yugoslavia visited the National Red Cross Headquarters and the National Gallery of Art today. Attachés said his interests were chiefly mechanical and that one of his ambitions in this country is to drive a jeep.
Allies hit first, spread ruin at two big Jap invasion bases
By Brydon C. Taves, United Press staff writer
The map shows Dili and Rabaul, Jap invasion bases pounded by MacArthur’s fliers.
Melbourne –
Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s planes, in one of the heaviest aerial assaults ever launched in the Southwest Pacific, struck the first blow today in a fight for control of these southern skies.
Operating over a 2,000-mile front, American and Australian airmen raided Dili, in Timor Island of the northwest invasion zone, and Rabaul in New Britain Island of the northeast zone.
They spread ruin through the target areas, smashing airdromes, grounded planes, barracks and supply dumps and started fires which the plane crews saw from 60 miles away as they flew homeward.
Allied planes also successfully attacked enemy troop quarters at Salamaua, on the north coast of New Guinea, and drive off a determined force of Jap Zero fighter planes which attempted to raid Port Moresby, the Allied advanced base on the New Guinea south coast.
Gen. MacArthur announced that the Allies came through this big series of engagements without loss.
In the Port Moresby dogfight, at least five Zeroes staggered off with serious damage, probably to crash in the mountainous New Guinea interior.
MacArthur hits first
No doubt was held here that the Allied raids on Dili, Rabaul and Salamaua opened a finish fight, on a scale never seen in the Antipodes, for supremacy of the air.
Both sides had been organizing for it. For four days, Allied and Jap planes had been conducting aerial reconnaissance marking the final preparation, and Gen. MacArthur then hit first and hard.
Seizing the initiative in the dark early hours of this morning, one great fleet of Allied planes, probably including Boeing Flying Fortresses and great Consolidated B-24 bombers, set out for the 500-mile flights to Dili and Rabaul from secret bases.
Fires range at Timor
At Dili, on the Portuguese end of Dutch-Portuguese Timor, the Allied planes roared in at low altitude and scored direct hits with their biggest bombs on enemy-occupied buildings. Great fires blazed as they smashed bomb after bomb on their targets.
In New Britain, Allied planes concentrated on the enemy airdrome runway, plane dispersal areas and building areas of the great Rabaul base.
Apparently, from the lack of enemy fighter plane challenge, the Japs were caught unaware, believing that the Allies were not yet ready to make their challenge.
There seemed no doubt from reports here that the Japs had suffered greater damage than in any previous single-day operation since Gen. MacArthur took over.
Headquarters believed that if Gen. MacArthur could get air supremacy, he would be ready at once to begin pushing the Japs back from New Guinea and the Australian-mandated islands which they seized early in the war.
Admiral Brown
Boston (UP) –
Rear Admiral William T. Tarrant, Commandant of the 1st Naval District, will be succeeded July 15 by Vice Admiral Wilson Brown, a task force commander of the Pacific Fleet who was credited with sinking or damaging 20 Jap ships in the New Guinea area, the Navy said today.
Admiral Brown, 60, was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal April 28 for “exceptionally meritorious service” in Pacific operations during February and March. Lt. Cdr. Edward O’Hare was attached to his force when he shot down five Jap planes.
Admiral Brown is a native of Philadelphia.
Los Angeles (UP) –
Stanley Johnston, the only reporter aboard the aircraft carrier Lexington in the Coral Sea battle, gave detailed accounts of heroism by Navy personnel, but ignored his own, a Lexington squadron leader said today.
Lt. Cdr. Weldon O. Hamilton said:
Johnston was one of the real heroes of the Lexington.
When it became apparent the Lexington was in a bad way, Johnston went below decks for his personal effects. He came up a little later lugging a badly wounded seaman. He dashed down again. Pretty soon, he returned, carrying another injured man.
I don’t know how many times he repeated the performance. Every time he insisted he was going after his own stuff, and every time he came back with a wounded or burned sailor.
He risked his life time and again.
Mr. Johnston’s dispatches had omitted any mention of his own part in the battle.
By Orlando Davidson, Scripps-Howard staff writer
Temporary gas rationing plan is to set up that no check on dealers is possible.
Washington –
When an American really wants to, he’s a whiz at breaking laws. Whether you take him dunking British prestige in Boston Harbor, shooting out the lights in a Wyoming bar, or guzzling in a Manhattan blind pig, the story’s roughly the same. If, collectively, he doesn’t care for a law, he just breaks it.
Which makes it of more than academic importance that, according to competent observers, our present defenses against black market operations have gaps in them wide enough to let through whole fleets of bootleg trucks. One reason, according to government studies, is that price control and rationing have been undertaken with a somewhat airy disregard for previous experience, both here and abroad.
Here’s an example. Forgery of ration coupons has been a major headache in England. Yet our sugar and gas cards could be duplicated by any moderately sharp 9-year-old on the press that Uncle Gus gave him for Christmas.
Administrative joke
Comment is hardly needed on the beautiful simplicity of the temporary gas-rationing plan – so set up that no check on dealers is possible. Actually, it’s an administrative joke. But that will be old water come July 15, so skip it. Another initial boner was the failure of control prices of such “substitutes” as used tires and honey. Both skyrocketed.
One lesson we should have learned from Europe is that it takes a combination of closely written laws, tight enforcement and a cooperative public to put across any price and ration program. In spite of stringent German control, Holland and Belgium both have active black bourses simply because the sturdy burghers of those allegedly conquered nations won’t play ball.
In England, on the other hand, superb morale is not strong enough to keep nobleman and cockney alike from taking advantage of loopholes. One popular one is an “evaporation” allowance for gas and butter – and it’s astonishing how those things do dry up in that English fog! Another is “lost” ration books.
In spite of these and other soft spots, Britain has its supply problem pretty well in hand. Regrettably, though, it’s the Nazis on their home grounds who seem to have squashed underground trade most effectively. And it isn’t just a matter of terrorism. They’re ruthless, of course, but the regime has cashed in heavily on one promise it has chosen to try to keep – that there should be a rough equality of sacrifice in the Reich.
Meals rationed
For instance, restaurant meals in Germany come under ration control. In England, they don’t. If you can lay down the equivalent of $6.60, you can get a very passable assortment of victuals at the Savoy.
Our own Prohibition-era furnishes a prime example of sloppy enforcement and messed-up public relations. There was complete lack of coordination between federal, state and local police. At no time did dry agents equal their shrewd antagonists in numbers, resources or brains.
But it probably wouldn’t have made such difference, because the public just wasn’t having Prohibition. Once the dry forces got their law on the books, they law down in their previously brilliant job of minority high-pressuring.
There has never been anything remotely brilliant about the attempt to educate the American people to the necessity of price control and rationing. Conflicting statements, varying wildly from day to day and from official to official, have done little to convince the public either of the hard necessity of the controls or the intelligence of the functionaries in charge.
Run on aluminum
There was a run of aluminum kitchenware when the consumers’ division of the old National Defense Advisory Commission let out a premature warning. Mrs. Roosevelt’s ill-timed sugar statement brought a wave of housewife hoarding. The LaGuardia scrap-collection drive was bungled. More recently, the veiled threats of tire and car confiscation have frightened some people, infuriated others and given rise to a use-‘em-up-while-we-can philosophy in others.
Congressional defiance of “those bureaucrats” hasn’t notably helped matters. The attempts of OPA’s enforcement division to lay the framework for an impossible job of policing brought screams from Rep. Harness (R-IN) and others that an American Gestapo was being turned loose on an unhappy citizenry.
The OPA is counting heavily in our patriotism. In Britain, patriotism wasn’t enough. Nor has it been enough in any country that has undertaken rationing.
By Allen Haden
Rio de Janeiro – (June 17)
An extremely serious cleavage between Americans and British in South America has split the united front needed to fight the Nazis here and, unless patched soon, it promises to impair the possibility of peacetime reconstruction.
Post-war policy, which both London and Washington are trying to define, attempted to bypass precisely this kind of pernicious rivalry. As a war effort, it is preposterous for allies to fight side by side against Japanese, Germans, Italians, only to have the cousins of soldiers being killed squabbling over shares of trade in South America.
So serious has the quarreling become that Eric Lingeman, former commercial counselor at the British Embassy in Buenos Aires and now at the British Embassy in Washington, has investigated it officially in a recent trip through Colombia, Peru, Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil.
The quarrel goes something like this:
An American businessman says casually at the American club in Buenos Aires:
After we win this war, we’ll have to fight the British.
A Briton answers bitterly:
You’ll win it only because we fought your war for you during two years while you were fighting only with dollars.
The American jeers:
Yeah? You haven’t done so much. You couldn’t even hold Singapore, the world’s greatest naval base!
The Britisher replies angrily:
We couldn’t hold Singapore because you were asleep. You were supposed to keep command of the seas, based on Pearl Harbor.
Anyway, cooperation demands some sacrifices.
When you find 100% cooperation, it is likely to be 90% British and 10% American.
The quarrel is on. No good comes of such useless, silly blame-throwing. Neither convinces the other.
Meanwhile, there is a spectator to the fight. He is most likely a businessman – Argentine, Brazilian, Uruguayan, Chilean.
He asks with utter reasonableness:
Why don’t you both keep your fighting for the Nazis?
He continues:
While we are talking, let me tell you we don’t like your blacklists. You both call them war measures to choke Germany now, but you mean them as a step to economic control of my country after the war. We can’t afford that. We must keep as many countries interested in our countries as possible, to balance all of you against each other for our own salvation.
The Britisher takes the bait.
American officials operating their blacklists of Axis firms in South America have learned British trade secrets and are passing on that information to American exporters.
The American counters:
Why not? British censorship in Trinidad photostated important trade letters exchanged between American firms and their clients in Latin America – for the benefit of British export trade.
The South American says:
You boys should get together. There should be – but isn’t – complete understanding between British and American embassies about blacklists. Blacklisting by one should mean – but doesn’t – blacklisting by the other.
The Britisher retorts:
The American Embassy is trying to drive us out of Brazil. Thank God, you can’t possibly do that in Argentina.
The American asks:
Why interfere with us in Latin America? We don’t interfere with you in India.
There’s the nub. The cat’s out of the bag.
At this point, the South Americans’ worst fears are confirmed. Britishers and Americans are fighting – to control his country, At this rate, the Good Neighbor Policy is just another name for the kind of imperialism which British exercised to:
…keep open the road to India.
The South American leaves the club and looks in the newspaper to see how the Germans are doing.
But some British and Americans have recognized the danger. In Buenos Aires some months ago, a small group of junior American and British business executives recognized the fact of this senseless backbiting and how it played into the hands of the Nazis’ fifth column. They organized a dutch-treat dinner once a month. They shun publicity, won’t have their names known or their place of meeting. I dined with them one night and shall respect their wishes. They have only one duty and purpose: To step on talk, gossip and slander disruptive to British-American cooperation.
Additionally, some Americans in Buenos Aires deliberately frequent the British clubs and Britishers the American club to eat, drink and play together, to fratenize.
In Rio de Janeiro in the past month, something of the same sort has occurred. Every week now, a number of businessmen, plus some American and British diplomats, meet for cocktails, alternating the nationality of their host.
These are laudable efforts to mend a serious split. The complete solution is not here, for these efforts only attack the outer manifestations. They do not answer the basic question.
Why is this British-American feud? For men who speak a foreign language all day, there is a fatal temptation to insult a man in English, a temptation which neither Americans nor British seem able to resist. However pleasant, it is fighting for the Nazis. They love it. It is meat to their chopper. Their whispering propaganda takes full advantage of the quarrel feeding it, fanning it. The Nazis have thrived on disruption of their elements.
It is unfortunately not a new thing. Something of the sort existed during the last war.
When British and American men and women in South America fight on the basis of partial information, they disagree profoundly with the policy Washington and London are trying to arrive at on the basis of full information.
Here’s the policy. Vice President Henry A. Wallace wasn’t fooling when speaking about the post-war world, he said on May 25, 1942:
No nation will have the God-given right to exploit other nations. Older nations will have the privilege of helping younger nations get started on the path of industrialism but there must be neither military nor economic imperialism.
Mr. Wallace spoke for the very top men in England and America. He also spoke for the very lowest in both countries – and in all the world. But Mr. Wallace was not heard by the in-betweens, the men who operate banks, make telephone and telegraph cables hum, who buy and sell.
Putting it baldly, the in-betweens see a chance for a killing. At best, the British want to inherit German trade, at worst to hold their former position. The Americans at worst, want to inherit the German share of trade and at best displace the British also.
I have discussed this problem with American, British and South American businessmen and diplomats over a period of months. They feel the situation urgently requires remedy. Sifting suggestions, they boil down to approximately this:
Restate in Washington and London the policy of Anglo-American cooperation, and why.
Home officers of firms having interests in South America should be mobilized through chambers of commerce to have their representatives know and understand the broad policy.
Strict instructions by the State Department and the Foreign Office to American and British diplomats respectively. The tenor:
Cooperate positively. If you can’t, come home. Stop knocking.
All except one of major scarcities traced back to same source
By S. Burton Heath, Pittsburgh Press special writer
The article below is the first of two analyzing the critical steel shortage – America’s bottleneck of bottlenecks.
New York –
Steel is the bottleneck of bottlenecks in our war production program.
With a single exception – skilled manpower – there is no major bottleneck which cannot be traced back to steel.
Nevertheless, paradoxically, experts in both government and industry agree that we have ample steel capacity for all foreseeable needs, and that this is being utilized skillfully and efficiently.
Lack of steel hits shipping
There is a shipping bottleneck. Because of it, we do not have enough capacity to bring in the raw materials we need. Badly needed implements of war are piling up at factories, for lack of vessels to carry them overseas. We’re rationed on sugar, we’re going to be rationed on coffee and tea, for lack of carrying space to bring them in.
We can’t invade Europe right away, because we do not have enough craft to transport the necessary armies and service them in action. The Axis is sinking ships faster than we can build them.
Why? Steel.
The Eastern Seaboard, with about half of the nation’s population, is strictly rationed on gasoline, although petroleum wells could produce and existing facilities could refine – more gasoline than we and our allies can possibly use.
Rubber example cited
Why? Lack of enough tanker ships, tank cars, locomotives to haul tank cars, pipelines, barges and tugboats to pull barges. Again, why? Steel.
We are fighting against collapse of our productive economy when our tires are used up, now that Japan has seized the sources of raw rubber. Scientists know how to make synthetic rubber that is at least as good, for tires, as the natural gum. It’s a bit expensive as yet, but mass production would lower the cost. And anyway, hang expense, if it’s needed for the war.
We have abundant petroleum and alcohol-producing grains, plus the know-how, plus an emergent need – but we can’t have rubber.
Why? Steel.
Construction handicapped
Go down the line, pick out any bottleneck you please, and you can trace it back to steel.
Why, then, don’t we build more plants and make the steel we need?
Ignoring the time element, the answer once more is – steel.
We don’t have the steel to build the plants with which to make the steel we need. That is, unless we ask Hitler and Hirohito to please roll marbles while we divert steel from shipping, shells, guns, planes, tanks, etc., and use it to construct plants with which to make steel.
Now, that picture looks bad. In a sense, perhaps, it looks phony. Particularly since this nation alone has a steel capacity half again as great as that of Germany, her allies, her puppets and her enslaved victims all together.
U.S. output is huge
By the end of 1942, we shall have the plants with which to make 92 million tons of steel ingots a year. During this year, we are actually producing 85 million tons. In her six years of preparation for this war from 1933 through 1938, Germany used for all purposes, military and civil, only three million tons more than we shall produce this year alone.
Why, then, should steel be so vicious a production bottleneck for us?
The answer is to be found, in great detail, in the conditions under which our peaceful nation is turning itself into an engine of military destruction.
We started late. We are endeavoring to do overnight what Germany did over years. We are supplying the anti-Nazi world, which was caught almost equally unprepared.
Conversion takes time
The steel needed in war is a different metal than the steel used in peacetime. We know hoe to make it, but we have had to change over.
The forms used for war material are different than those used in peacetime. It takes time to retool and convert.
We had 28 continuous strip mills designed to roll 15 million tons of thin steel mostly for auto use. The utmost we ever had produced in moderately heavy plate was a little more than 5,600,000 tons.
This year, we are turning out close to 15 million tons of plate too heavy for the strip mills, but higher than pre-war thicknesses and therefore representing a greater piece production per ton.
Plate is bottleneck
Plate is a major bottleneck in the steel program – plate for ships, for tanks, for freight cars, for building construction.
Another tight spot in steel is structural shapes, used primarily for buildings and secondarily in ships. Because of the huge plant expansion program, we needed more than the fabricating capacity could turn out. In the first quarter of this year, we made half again as many tons of structural shapes as in the corresponding period of 1937, a banner year.
So we have the plants, with which to make enough ingot steel but we do not have enough steel – in the required forms – with which to carry out our war production at full speed.
New York (UP) – (June 25)
Leon Henderson, head of the Office of Price Administration, called on Americans last night to:
…take faith in the example of Russia.
He told guests at a dinner for leaders of the merchandise and apparel industry:
Every American, when he reads the news in his morning paper that Sevastopol has held out one more day against the onslaught of Nazi might, may draw strength, courage and sustenance from this magnificent lesson-example.
Mr. Henderson expressed faith in victory through unified farm, labor, industry and government efforts, and said:
I know that we’re not going to have inflation – as this country’s war effort deepens, this country will meet the test.
Soviet crew proves that it wasn’t U.S. sub
Moscow (UP) –
The Russian steamer Angarstroy, which was torpedoed and sunk off Japan May 1, was attacked by Jap submarines and efforts of Jap newspapers to blame the attack on an American submarine will not stand inquiry, the Soviet government charged today.
Members of the crew of 4,761-ton ship are now at Harbin, Manchuria, on the way home. And their statements of the attack confirm that Japan is responsible for the sinking. The crewmen were first landed at Dairen after they had been picked up from lifeboats by a Jap ship.
Forced into port
The Angarstroy’s first brush with Jap warships came April 24, when it was stopped 130 miles from the Jap shore and ordered to proceed to a Jap port, the rescued sailors said. After inspection, the Japs permitted the captain to proceed on a course mapped by them. The boat was 32 miles out of port in an area heavily guarded, when it was hit by two torpedoes and quickly sank.
TASS, Soviet news agency, reported:
Two Japanese submarines immediately appeared at the site where the steamer had sunk and near the boats in which the crew of the Angarstroy had saved themselves. The submarines escorted these boats to a Japanese steamer which picked up the crew.
Prove Jap sub did it
Despite these circumstances and the fact that this happened in an area heavily guarded by Japanese submarines, Japanese newspapers, referring to statements of representatives in official Japanese circles, advanced a version alleging that the sinking was effected by an American and not a Japanese submarine.
TASS concluded:
The Angarstroy crew stated that this version stands no criticism since the precise circumstances under which the Soviet steamer was lost prove that it was sunk by a Japanese submarine.
U.S. cities rules on bills outstanding since May
Washington (UP) –
Persons with unpaid charge accounts dating from before May 1 have just two weeks left to clear their bills or face default, the Federal Reserve System said today.
The Federal Reserve’s consumer credit regulations, issued May 6, required all charge accounts to be paid in full no later than:
…the tenth day of the second calendar month following the calendar month during which the charged purchases were made.
The regulations classed all charge accounts unpaid before May 1 along with purchases made during May. Hence all the “old” accounts must be paid in full by July 10.
Old charge accounts not paid in full by that date will be declared in “default.” This means the customer’s credit will be stopped by the merchant holding the unpaid bill. A default, once imposed, can be lifted by one of three methods:
Payment in full of the amount of the bill.
Entering into a written agreement with the merchant to pay the bill in regular installments within six months, the payments to be no less than $5 a month or $1.25 a week.
Filing with the creditor a statement that payment within the six-month period would work a hardship and then entering into a written agreement to pay off the bill within 12 months.
Installment sales are not effected by the approaching July 10 deadline on charge accounts.
Minority report joins in criticizing cost-plus arrangements
Washington (UP) –
Legislation to prohibit the War Department from making any additional cost-plus-fixed-fee contracts will be introduced in the House next week, Chairman Andrew J. May (D-KY) of the House Military Affairs Committee said today.
Cost-plus-fixed-fee contracts were criticized in two reports – a majority and a minority – issued this week by the committee.
The minority report, issued last night by 10 Democratic members of the committee, was in sharp disagreement with the majority report on most points, but on the subject of fixed-fee contracts, they were equally critical. The minority conceded, however, that they might be necessary:
…in an emergency.
Says practice stopped
The minority said:
The Army Engineers, who are now in charge of all construction, have abandoned the practice as far as conditions will permit.
The majority report, agreed to by nine Republicans and three Democrats, charged that the committee had found:
…nearly every conceivable type of extravagant waste.
The minority accused the majority of being “biased and intemperate” in its report, and asserted that committee members had been asked to agree to issuance of the report without having had an opportunity to read and discuss it.
The minority said:
We regret to see approximately 15 months of effort beclouded, if not destroyed, by a hastily-considered, loosely-prepared, harshly-worded and biased report.
Hit blanket charges
The majority was especially critical of the War Department and the War Production Board. The Air Forces was also singled out as guilty of waste and extravagance.
The minority said:
Blanket charges or insinuations have no place in a report upon the conduct of war involving our very existence. It is manifestly unfair to condemn the whole organizations and agencies by loose references…
On the whole, the War Department has done a marvelous job in the matter of construction and housing and is entitled to praise rather than unjust criticism.
The record of the committee will show that there have been numerous instances of graft, inefficiency, excessive profits and excessive fees. These have been the exception rather than the rule. Be it said to the credit of the War Department, that without exception when illegalities or irregularities have been discovered, they have acted with dispatch not only to correct conditions, but to prosecute violators of the law.
1939 statement cited
The majority report criticized the administration for alleged failure to build up sufficient stockpiles of strategic materials before the outbreak of war. The minority placed in its report a minority statement made by 10 members of the Military Affairs Committee in 1939 opposing a $100-million appropriation for acquiring strategic materials. They asked that $10 million be appropriated. Most of the Republicans who signed the majority report issued by the committee Tuesday also signed the minority report in 1939.
The minority report was signed by the chairmen of two of the three subcommittees which have been investigating the war effort for the Military Affairs Committee. They were Reps. Ewing Thomason (D-TX) and Dow Harter (D-OH). Other signers were Reps. Andrew Edmiston (D-WV), Matthew J. Merritt (D-NY), John M. Costello (D-CA), Overton Brooks (D-LA), John Sparkman (D-AL), Paul J. Kilday (D-TX), Clifford Davis (D-TN) and William J. Fitzgerald (D-CT).
Denver (UP) –
The two major aims of the American Newspaper Guild during the coming year will be the attainment of the “Guild shop for union security” and “the adjustment of wages.”
The statement of principal objectives was made to delegates at the ninth annual convention here today in the report of the officers’ report committee.
The report also declared there is need for wage stabilization and for the protection of the five-day, 40-hour week on newspapers.
A gain in membership during the past year was announced in the statement, but no figures were disclosed.
U.S. Maritime Service Headquarters in the Chamber of Commerce Bldg. announced today that sailors on duty with the service will receive the same pay raises recently granted by Congress to the Army and Navy. Thus, an apprentice seaman will receive $50 a month instead of $21.
Washington –
The first of the new “win-the-war” three-cent postage stamps which go on sale July 4 were printed yesterday. Postmaster General Frank Walker and Under Secretary of War Robert P. Patterson witnessed the first press run at the Bureau of Engraving. The new stamp features a “V for Victory” design.
House committee urges full exploitation
Washington (UP) –
A special House investigating committee will recommend that this country exploit the possibilities of mass air transport to meet the wartime problems and assure supremacy in world markets after the war, it was disclosed today.
Chairman Jack Nichols (D-OK) of the Committee on Air Transport and Safety, which has been conducting an investigation for almost a year, said a report would be issued within a few weeks.
Great emphasis, he said, would be placed on the importance of a world-encircling system of airplane travel. He predicted that:
World markets will be dominated by the nation which first develops the long-range heavy cargo plane to fly its products to the far corners of the earth.
Germany has taken the lead in wartime air transport, moving troops and materials long distances in huge planes, Mr. Nichols reported while Britain is also concentrating on plans to utilize planes to recoup and expand her overseas markets, now hit by ship sinkings.
Mr. Nichols suggested that the United States, with huge factories already pouring out thousands of planes, is in a favorable position to blaze the way for large-scale air transport.
Mr. Nichols listed as air transport possibilities a special type of tanker plane to supply fuel oil and gasoline to the East Coast; glider trains, with one plane hauling as many as 10 gliders carrying 50 tons of bulk freight, picking up the gliders without the necessity of landing and cutting them loose for deliveries along the route, and special long-range cargo planes, larger even than those used by Germany, which might solve the transportation bottlenecks hampering supply movements to troops in United Nations outposts.
News on possible bombing of American cities is curtailed
Washington –
The Office of Censorship today issued a revised code of wartime practices for American broadcasters, making several changes in its radio rules since the first code was established Jan. 15, 1942.
The code, designed as a Handbook in Voluntary Censorship, was divided into two sections – news broadcasts and programs.
Under the news broadcast section, the only revision in the new code dealt with enemy air attacks, and was based on suggestions made some time ago by Censorship Director Byron Price. The revision provides that broadcasters outside an area under attack will not make any mention of the action unless expressly authorized for radio by the War Department in Washington.
Clarity sought
Several changes were made in the program sections. Request programs were bracketed under two general subtitles – music and talk – for greater clarity.
A new section on commercial continuity asked that broadcasters:
…be alert to prevent the transmission of subversive information through the use of commercial continuity in program or announcement broadcasts.
The section on dramatic programs requests that broadcasters avoid portraying the horrors of war, and withhold any sound effects that might be confused with air raid alarms.
Translations required
In a new paragraph on foreign language programs, the code declared:
Broadcasters have recognized that the loyalty of their personnel is of supreme importance in voluntary censorship; they recognize the dangers inherent in those foreign language broadcasts which are not under the control at all times of responsible station executives.
Station managements, therefore, are requested to require all persons who broadcast in a foreign language to submit to the management in advance of broadcast complete scripts or transcriptions of such material, with an English translation. It is further requested that such material be checked “on the air” against the approve script and that no deviation therefrom be permitted. These scripts or transcriptions with their translations should be kept on file at the station.
The revised code was worked out by the Censorship Office in collaboration with representatives of broadcasters’ organizations.
The week of conferences between the President and the Prime Minister covered very fully all of the major problems of the war which is conducted by the United Nations on every continent and in every sea.
We have taken full cognizance of our disadvantages as well as our advantages. We do not underrate the task.
We have conducted our conferences with the full knowledge of the power and resourcefulness of our enemies.
In the matter of the production of munitions of all kinds, the survey gives on the whole an optimistic picture. The previously planned monthly output has not reached the maximum but is fast approaching it on schedule.
Because of the wide extension of the war to all parts of the world, transportation of the fighting forces, together with the transportation of munitions of war and supplies, still constitutes the major problem of the United Nations.
While submarine warfare on the part of the Axis continues to take heavy toll of cargo ships, the actual production of new tonnage is greatly increasing month by month. It is hoped that as a result of the steps planned at this conference the respective navies will further reduce the toll of merchant shipping.
The United Nations have never been in such hearty and de-tailed agreement on plans for winning the war as they are today.
We recognize and applaud the Russian resistance to the main attack being made by Germany and we rejoice in the magnificent resistance of the Chinese Army. Detailed discussions were held with our military advisers on methods to be adopted against Japan and the relief of China.
While exact plans, for obvious reasons, cannot be disclosed, it can be said that the coming operations which were discussed in detail at our Washington conferences, between ourselves and our respective military advisers, will divert German strength from the attack on Russia.
The Prime Minister and the President have met twice before, first in August 1941, and again in December 1941. There is no doubt in their minds that the overall picture is more favorable to victory than it was either in August or December of last year.
The Pittsburgh Press (June 27, 1942)
German strength to be diverted from Russia; aid to China also studied in detail
Washington (UP) –
President Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill today promised to divert German strength from Russia in “forthcoming operations” – obviously by opening a second front, presumably in Europe.
In a joint statement following Mr. Churchill’s safe return to London, the two leaders said they have “no doubt that the overall picture is more favorable to victory” for the United Nations than when they conferred last August and against last December.
The promises of “forthcoming operations” came only two days after the War Department here disclosed establishment of a European “Theater of Operations” for U.S. Army forces, under direction of Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower. Undisclosed thousands of U.S. troops are already in the British Isles.
Transportation difficulties
Emphasizing the difficulties of transportation which must be met by the United Nations to wage successful war “on every continent and in every sea,” the President and the Prime Minister said:
While exact plans… cannot be disclosed, it can be said that the coming operations which were discussed in detail at our Washington conferences, between ourselves and our respective military advisers, will divert German strength from the attack on Russia.
To make clear that the Pacific War is also in the forefront of their plans, they said:
We recognize and applaud the Russian resistance to the main attack being made by Germany and we rejoice in the magnificent resistance of the Chinese Army. Detailed discussions were held with our military advisers on methods to be adopted against Japan and the relief of China.
Of the intensive submarine warfare being waged by the Axis against United Nations shipping in the Western Atlantic, they said:
While submarine warfare on the part of the Axis continues to take heavy toll of cargo ships, the actual production of new tonnage is greatly increasing month by month. It is hoped that as a result of the steps planned at this conference the respective navies will further reduce the toll of merchant shipping.
Allies in full agreement
The statement, released simultaneously in Washington and London, took “full cognizance” of Allied disadvantages and advantages, but on the whole, it was an optimistic comment from the two ranking leaders of the United Nations.
The statement said:
The United Nations have never been in such hearty and detailed agreement on plans for winning the war as they are today.
“In the matter of the production of munitions of all kinds,” Mr. Roosevelt and Churchill said their surveys gave:
…on the whole an optimistic picture.
They said:
The previously planned monthly output has not reached the maximum but is fast approaching it on schedule.
Shipping crisis studied
While Mr. Churchill was at the White House, he and the President called in ranking shipping experts of Great Britain and the United States to work out means of solving this major transportation problem. The statement today gave no concrete indication as to what these steps will be.
The references in the statement to Russia and China reflected the detailed talks held earlier this week by the President and the Prime Minister with Dr. T. V. Soong, the Chinese Foreign Minister, who asked them for added air support, and Soviet Ambassador Maxim Litvinov.
Unusual importance was attached to these conferences, and this importance was supported by the President and the Prime Minister in their statement today.
The optimism concerning producing as voiced by the President and the Prime Minister followed an announcement yesterday by Mr. Roosevelt that America in May produced nearly 4,000 planes, about 1,500 tanks, 2,000 artillery pieces and anti-tank guns and over 100,000 machine guns and submachine guns.
Washington (UP) –
Improvised bombsights costing 20¢ each were used by the American B-25 bombers which raided Japan April 18, the War Department revealed today.
The secret Norden sights, normally used in the planes, were removed because the raid was to be made at low altitude where the Norden sights would not be vitally needed and because of the possibility that they might fall into Jap hands.
Meanwhile, 23 members of the raiding expedition were presented the Distinguished Flying Cross at Washington by Lt. Gen. Henry H. Arnold, Chief of the Army Air Forces.
Brig. Gen. James Doolittle, who led the raid, watched the ceremony. He has already been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. Others of the 79 men who accompanies him will be decorated later.