World Battlefronts: BATTLE OF ASIA: Big Game in Burma

Not for Mandalay alone had the British Fourteenth Army set up three hard-won bridgeheads on the wide Irrawaddy River above & below the city. Broad, hearty Lieut. General Sir William J. Slim was after bigger game.

This week the Japanese defending Mandalay suddenly found themselves in the middle of a semicircle. General Slim had sprung tanks and airborne troops in a swift 85-mile dash from one bridgehead into Meiktila (70 miles south of Mandalay), to seize eight Jap airfields. There and on the way there the British killed 1,600 Japs. With one punch they had severed the enemy's land and water links from Rangoon to Mandalay, and had virtually cut off the main forces defending Burma. The next move was up to the Japs —if they could make it.