World Battlefronts: The Battlewagons Roar

No hair adorns the chin of Nippon's waxy, weak-chinned Emperor Hirohito. But last week his cheeks burned to the same scorching heat that Spain's gloomy Philip II knew when Britain's pirate captains sailed up to singe his beard.

Playing Francis Drake's role was U.S. Admiral Raymond A. Spruance. For three weeks his Fifth Fleet had roamed Japanese waters on battle cruise, spreading destruction, taunting the shattered Japanese Fleet to come out and fight.

Bombs on a Bridge. Now the target was the sensitive Ryukyus, the 55-island bridge linking Formosa to Japan's main islands. From the carriers of Task Force 58 Vice Admiral Marc A. Mitscher hurled a Jap-estimated 600 planes at these islands. They roared out of the sky in the early morning and hammered all through the day at six of the islands.

In their wake they left 55 ships sunk or damaged, 91 aircraft destroyed or damaged; hangars, barracks, administration buildings, mills, lumber yards, radio and radar stations, all well bombed.

Then Spruance added more injury. Ignoring a Japanese air force that had once been able to reach down to Singapore to sink the Prince of Wales and Repulse, he turned his battleships, cruisers and destroyers in on the shore.

Shells on a Shore. Out of the gathering dusk loomed reef-ringed Okino-Daito, 450 miles from the Japanese homeland. All night the fleet paraded by while the guns spoke a deadly monologue. As dawn broke, the ships steamed out to sea.

Meanwhile the U.S. Army claimed its own share of the Japanese skies. In the center of empire, Tokyo was visited anew by some 200 Marianas-based Superfortresses. Sadly a Tokyo newspaper conceded that the Americans might yet land successfully in the Japanese homeland.